UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
Nationalism and Globalization in the Social Construction of the Internet in Canada
by
Delia D. Dumitrica
A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE
CALGARY, ALBERTA
July, 2011
© Delia D. Dumitrica 2011 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition
395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington OttawaONK1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada
Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-81482-6 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-81482-6
NOTICE: AVIS:
The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduce, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats.
The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission.
In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these.
While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis.
1*1 Canada Abstract
This thesis looks into the social construction of the internet as an object of discourse in relation to discourses of nationalism and globalization. It investigates this question by analyzing the discursive articulations of the internet in the spheres of policy, media and everyday life. Importantly, this research project originates in a view of the internet as a site where social values, forces and power networks intersect; this, I propose, makes the social construction of the internet a suitable site for exposing the dynamics and the concerns permeating our contemporary world. To get to these issues, this thesis relies on a Foucaultian theoretical framework for approaching the relation between discourses, power and material structures. By means of a critical discourse analysis, it investigates 7 federal policy reports and 134 news stories for their articulations of the internet in
Canada. This data has been supplemented with a convenience sample consisting of 29 interviews with internet users across Canada; these interviews have provided an insight into how individuals articulate an image of the internet in relation to nationalism and globalization in everyday life. The results of this analysis point to the increased importance of the mutual adjustment of neo-liberalism and nationalism in legitimizing a particular distribution of power across the social landscape. This thesis exposes the processes through which the 'nationalization' of the internet takes place in the three analyzed spheres. It further proposes that, far from becoming obsolete, nationalism remains a major discourse for ordering the world and, thus, for legitimizing social action.
n A ckn owledgements
Throughout the years, many people have helped me become an intellectual. Some have inspired me, others have helped me discover where I stand and what I hold most dear.
They have all challenged me to push my own thinking and to fall in love with new problematics.
I owe a lot to my supervisory committee. Prof. David Mitchell has been the best supervisor for me. He gracefully offered me the opportunity to engage in theoretical debates on anything that crossed my mind; yet, he also reminded me to stop fighting intellectual wars and to focus on exploring the problematic at hand. Most importantly, he warned me of the thin line between knowledge and belief. Prof. Maria Bakardjieva has been my strongest supporter, as well as my strongest challenger; her comments throughout the years have prompted me to consider new angles and to scrutinize my own position. Prof. Rob Walker has been an inspiration ever since I have first met him in
Tromso, back in 2004. The opportunity to listen to his lectures has been inspirational; his questions around this project have stayed with me, though I still have a long way to go in conceptualizing processes of boundary-making. All three members of my supervisory committee, as well as Dr. Byron Miller, provided very useful comments on earlier drafts of this thesis; needless to say, I am responsible for any mistakes or weaknesses that may exist in it.
I would also like to also thank the professors who have inspired me throughout my graduate studies. Without their support and without the long discussions that I had with each of them, I would have never discovered the treacherous pleasure of critical
iii thinking. Dr. Krassimir Kanev has been an inspiration in more than one way; his intellectual stature and his commitment to social issues have been a great source of motivation for me. My former supervisors - Dr. Miklos Sukosd, the Central European
University, Dr. Vidar Vambheim, Universitet i Tromso, and Dr. J. Peter Burgess, the
Peace Research Institute in Oslo - have all helped me crystallize my understanding of discourse and power, indulging my rambling speeches on nationalism.
I also want to thank my friends in Calgary and abroad. The PhD-Girls in Calgary
(Dr. Amanda Williams, Constance Friese, Georgia Gaden, Dr. Sharon Mah, Dr. Sophie
Wertheimer and Yvonne Pratt) have been the most awesome support network I have ever had. Amanda, a special thank you for everything! My friends abroad are simply too numerous to name; yet, they have all been there for me in so many ways. A big thank you to Dr. Michael Skey for his on-going reminder that nationalism is worth studying (as well as for his advice on various chapters of this thesis).
Finally, I am greatly indebted to my parents, for raising me to become a critical thinker. They have both encouraged me to read, learn and think; as my mother used to say, the only thing a parent can truly give her child is the skills to build for herself the life she wants. I thank them both for this opportunity. And speaking of opportunity, I was able to afford a PhD because of my husband, who has worked very hard for both of us.
He has been my psychologist, my best friend and my greatest fan. This thesis is dedicated to them.
IV Table of Contents
Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Table of Contents v List of Tables viii List of Figures ix
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 The issue 1 1.2 The background 4 1.2.1 The internet and the nation 6 1.2.2 The internet and the global village 7 1.2.3 Post-modernist approaches 9 1.3 The research project 13 1.3.1 Definitions 15 1.3.2 Methodology 19 1.4 Thesis structure 24
CHAPTER 2: NATIONALISM AND COMMUNICATION 27 2.1 Communication media in the field of nationalism studies 28 2.1.1 Emergence of the field 29 2.1.1.1 Mapping the logic of nationalism 31 2.1.2 Current debates and trends in nationalism studies 35 2.1.2.1 The debates over the nature and timing of nations 37 2.1.2.2 Nationalism and Globalization 52 2.2 Nationalism in the field of communication studies 57 2.2.1 Message transmission models 58 2.2.1.1 Cybernetic roots 59 2.2.1.2 Media functions and media effects 60 2.2.2 Critical models of communication 62 2.2.2.1 Media as cultural industries 64 2.2.2.2 Media as the public sphere 67 2.2.2.3 Media as mechanisms of encoding/ decoding meaning 71 2.2.2.4 Media, simulated realities and the end of grand narratives 75 2.2.3 Medium theory 78 2.3 Summary 81
CHAPTER 3: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK - IDEOLOGY, DISCOURSE AND MEANING-MAKING 83 3.1 Goals, definitions and assumptions framing the theoretical approach 85 3.2 "Comment Ton pense": From Ideology to Representation and Discourse 92 3.2.1 The Science of Ideas 93 3.2.2 The false consciousness 94 3.2.3 Articulation, interpellation and hegemony 98 3.2.3.1 Articulation 99
v 3.2.3.2 Interpellation 105 3.2.3.3 Hegemony 108 3.2.4 Discursive Practices 112 3.2.4.1 Discourse 116 3.2.5 From discourse to everyday understanding 119 3.3 Summary 122
CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS 124 4.1 Critical Discourse Analysis 125 4.1.1 Background: Discourse Analysis 125 4.1.2 Critical Discourse Analysis 128 4.1.3 Principles of CDA 130 4.1.4 Limitations of CD A 132 4.2 The Method of Analysis 137 4.2.1 Data 138 4.2.2 The method of analysis for policy and newspaper texts 140 4.2.3 The method of analysis for the interviews 145 4.2.3.1 The interview sample 148 4.2.3.2 The questionnaire 150 4.2.3.3 The analysis 152 4.3 Summary 154
CHAPTER 5: AN OVERVIEW OF THE INTERNET IN CANADA 155 5.1 Communication and Nationalism in Intellectual Thought 156 5.2 Communication and Nationalism in the Policy Sphere 160 5.2.1 The carriers: from telegraphy to telecommunications 161 5.2.1.1 The Telegraph 162 5.2.1.2 The Telephone 163 5.2.1.3 Telecomunications 164 5.2.2 The content providers: broadcasting 166 5.2.3 The Information Highway 173 5.2.3.1 Early information policy (1960s-1980s) 174 5.2.1.1 Building the'information highway'(1990s) 175 5.2.1.2 CRTC Decisions 179 5.2.1.3 The Broadband Task Force 182 5.3 Summary 183
CHAPTER 6: NATIONALIZING THE INTERNET, SUCCEEDING IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY: ANALYSIS OF POLICY REPORTS 186 6.1 Overview of the analyzed data 187 6.2 Overview of the policy reports 191 6.3 The conceptual relations 196 6.3.1 Relations of existence 198 6.3.2 Relations of qualification 203 6.3.3 Relations of possession/ determination 213 6.3.4 Relations of agency 215 6.4 Summary 223
VI CHAPTER 7: DEBATING NATIONAL INTEREST: ANALYZING THE NEWS COVERAGE OF THE POLICY REPORTS 226 7.1 The analysis sample 227 7.2 Overview of the units of analysis 231 7.3 Contextualizing the newspaper articles 234 7.4 The conceptual relations 238 7.4.1 Relations of existence 239 7.4.2 Relations of qualification 246 7.4.3 Relations of possession/ determination 249 7.4.4 Relations of agency 251 7.5 Summary 262
CHAPTER 8: NATIONAL IDENTITY AND SPACES OF AGENCY: ANALYZING THE INTERVIEWS 265 8.1 Overview of the interviews 266 8.1.1 Images of the internet 267 8.1.2 National identification 269 8.1.3 Nationalism in everyday life 271 8.2 The conceptual relations 273 8.2.1 Relations of qualification: a Canadian online space 275 8.2.2 Relations of existence: the nation on the internet 285 8.2.3 Relations of agency: the internet impacts the nation 295 8.3 Summary 302
CHAPTER 9: DISCUSSION 305 9.1 The question of social change 306 9.1.1 Change and nationalism in the spheres of policy and media 307 9.1.2 Change and nationalism in everyday meaning-making 309 9.1.3 Social change and hegemonic discursive adaptation 314 9.2 Communication and meaning across social spheres 318 9.3 Theoretical reflections on the concept of discourse 324 9.3.1 Assessing power relations 324 9.3.2 The analytical purchase of'discourse' 330
CHAPTER 10: CONCLUSION 334 10.1 Assessing the findings 336 10.2 Significance and future directions 341 10.2.1 The nationalization of communication media 341 10.2.2 The endurance of nationalism 343 10.2.3 The ongoing relevance of'discourse' as an analytical tool 344 10.2.4 Communication flows and the macro/ micro gap 345 10.2.5 A social systems theory approach to ideology and technology? 346
BIBLIOGRAPHY 348
APPENDIX A:LIST OF SEARCH KEYWORDS AND NEWSPAPER ARTICLES INCLUDED IN THE ANALYSIS SAMPLE 378
vn List of Tables
Table 1: List of data for policy documents, newspaper articles and interviews 139 Table 2: List of proxies for the main concepts 141 Table 3: Overview of the interviewees 149 Table 4: Conceptual relations and Interview Questions 153 Table 5: Number of analyzed units in the policy reports 188 Table 6: The strength of the conceptual relations between 'internet' and 'nation' 188 Table 7: The tone of the conceptual relations between 'internet' and 'nation' 188 Table 8: Frequency of topics in the analyzed units across the policy reports 189 Table 9: Distribution of articles across newspapers 227 Table 10: Distribution of actors (quoted or mentioned) across the articles 228 Table 11: Frequency of topics across the articles in the sample 229 Table 12: The distribution of the analyzed units across the newspaper articles sample..231 Table 13: The frequency of topics of the analyzed units across the newspaper articles sample 232 Table 14: Strength of the conceptual relations between 'internet' and 'nation' in the news stories sample 233 233 Table 15: Tone of the conceptual relations between 'internet' and 'nation' in the newspaper stories sample 233 233 Table 16: Frequency of the images of the internet proposed by respondents (all answers paraphrased) 269 Table 17: The use of'Us versus Other' in the interviews (all answers paraphrased) 273 Table 18: Frequency of elements listed as part of the 'Canadian online space' (all answers paraphrased) 282 Table 19: Elements explicitly mentioned by respondents as reminders of national identity online (all answers paraphrased) 286 287 Table 21: Frequency of the proposed effects of the internet on national identity (all answers paraphrased) 296
vm List of Figures
Figure 1: Intellectual Heritage of Critical Discourse Analysis 129
IX 1 Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 The issue
The popularization of the internet has often constructed an image of this communication medium in terms of its alleged contribution to the creation of a 'global' world, where nations and national borders become obsolete (e.g. Negroponte, 1998). The idea of communication technologies bringing the world together is, of course, not new; communication scholar Marshall McLuhan (1962) has best captured it in his argument that electronic communication creates an interdependent 'global village'.
Yet, the discursive construction of the internet as an enabler of a 'new' and interconnected world is not as simple as it may appear in such popular accounts. The increased integration of the internet in our everyday lives is neither a smooth, nor a
'natural' process of adopting a more efficient technology to communicate and to access information. Most importantly, this integration involves a re-organization of the social actors overseeing and benefiting from the development of the internet. For, as the often forgotten struggles between the enthusiastic supporters of an open, free and flexible networking technology and commercial interests remind us (e.g. Abbate, 2001), the internet is not intrinsically 'open', 'democratic' or 'global'.
It is thus important to remember that the internet became a national policy objective in the United States primarily as an economic tool: as U.S. Vice-President Al
Gore described it, the internet was the foundation for "a national transformation to an information and knowledge-based society, a key element for the U.S. to sustain leadership in the world economy" (Coalition formed, 1993, p. B5). In the eyes of the
Canadian telecommunications companies, this 'information and knowledge-based society' spelled the promise of new markets for profit: the possibility to move into other types of services, to integrate other successful ventures and to translate technological solutions into more revenue. But other actors - whether smaller companies trying to forge a new market niche or technological enthusiasts extolling the virtues of technology - had their own reasons for pushing for the integration of the internet into the everyday life of
Canadians.
By 2009, Canadians appeared to have made these dreams a reality: 80% of the population was using the internet for personal reasons and 96% of these internet users connected from home (Statistics Canada, 2010). It certainly looked as if the internet was now becoming - to paraphrase Slavo Zizek (1989) - a "symbol of our age"; but the question remained: what was it a symbol of? Official statistics indicated that Canadians were mostly concerned about security and privacy issues; these point to an image of the internet as a dangerous space. Yet, this image was certainly not the one that former
Industry Minister John Manley had in mind when he announced, back in 1994, that the internet was to become a key pillar of the economic strategy of the government. The internet, he stated, was key to the future of Canada, particularly in its ability to "generate wealth for our people" and to overcome "our geography in newer and different ways"
(quoted in Bronskill, 1993, p. E2).
If we accept that the social roles and meanings of the internet are not a consequence of the inner features of technology, then a new set of question begs for attention: who defines what the internet is, what it should do and what it should look like? And, perhaps more importantly, what can the discursive constructions of the 3 internet put forward by various social actors tell us about our contemporary concerns, anxieties and networks of power?
Starting from such questions, this thesis proposes an exploration of the ways in which the internet becomes spoken of in the context of a particular case study, Canada.
This, I argue, is an important task: although 20 years have passed since the initial popularization of the internet, the ways in which this medium is imagined remain an important, albeit less explored, problematic. Scholars such as Patrice Flichy (2007) or
Vincent Mosco (2005) brought to the forefront the ideological work involved in the construction of the internet, arguing that "the social imaginaire enables a society to construct its identity by expressing its expectations for the future" (Flichy, 2007, p. 208); thus, they recommended that the analysis of this imaginaire was able to provide a glimpse into the discursive practices that (in)form the social formations in which we live.
Following these recommendations, this research project engages with the discursive construction1 of the internet in the case of Canada in respect to two specific discourses: nationalism and globalization. The two, I argue, remain central to a world where the terms 'connections', 'communications' and 'networks' are circulated against a social structure where borders remain policed by passports, where identity cards and birth certificates define who can be a citizen and who can not, but where capital and ideas are allegedly able to disregard both borders and practices of identification2. Such tropes are relevant to the construction of information and communication technologies (ICTs): for
1 As the title of this thesis suggests, the broad epistemological position espoused here is social constructivism (see Crotty, 1998) The use of'social construction' throughout this thesis draws from Berger and Lukman (1966/1991) 2 By practices of identification I mean the official requirements for identification (birth certificates, identity cards, passports) For an exploration of these tensions, see the contributions to the edited volume Globalization, the State and Violence (Friedman, 2003) or, from a communication perspective, Appardurai (1996) 4
Vincent Mosco, these constructions are marked by the myth of the 'end of an era' - the end of history, the end of politics, the end of geography - allegedly caused by ICTs in general, and cyberspace in particular. This myth has been an integral part of the popularization of ICTs as marking a rupture with the past, "the creation of a new time, the Computer Age (or Information Age, etc.), and a new (virtual) space we call
Cyberspace" (Mosco, 2005, p. 56). Yet, as Elizabeth Eisenstein noted as early as 1979, the debates around the effects of 'new technologies' on 'old social structures' have been the norm, rather than the exception3. Anticipating Zizek, Eisenstein (1979) emphasized that although such debates pretend to be diagnostic, they are in fact symptomatic: What do they deplore or praise? How are they articulated? Whose interests do these articulations serve?
1.2 The background
"Travelling at blinding speed along weightless paths of thin, long, fibers of glass,
tiny bits of information are transmitted and received throughout the world billions
upon billions of times each second. They bombard the earth with great density in
some regions, yet they barely touch ground in others. Impervious to borders, these
ephemeral bits carry corporate documents, cultural products, consumer
transactions, and countless other forms of communication. The vast and ever-
expanding global web of information resides at the centre of recent debates on the
politics of national identity and the culture of global technology" (Brint, 2001, p.
4)-
3A discussion subsequently rehearsed by Carolyn Marvin (1988) in her work on electronic communications. 5
The view that political scientist Michael Brint summarized here has already been introduced as an important popular account of the 'internet'; as a carrier of information, this medium appears indifferent to national borders. Its indifference seems to stem from its technological infrastructure: bits, the basic units of information, are 'indifferent' to anything of a social nature. Regardless of the social significance of the meaning that they carry, the strings of zeros and ones are, like electricity, following their own path that responds only to scientific laws.
Or at least that's how the technical discourse has attempted to define the internet: as a carrier able to bridge across great distances and to disregard any cultural or social differences. In this articulation, the social aspect of the transmission/ reception end points are effaced, while the possibility of world-wide connectivity is magnified. From a technical point of view, the description of this transmission is not different from any other form of electronic communication; in fact, this is how Shannon and Weaver defined communication, a definition that has been at the core of the emergence of communication studies as a field in social sciences (e.g. Attallah, 1991; Hardt, 1989; Pooley & Park,
2008).
Importantly, this view effaces the power aspects playing into the definition of the internet: the ways in which we construct a technology are not only indicative of the distribution of power within a society, but also shaping the path of that technology (Pinch
& Bijke, 1987). As philosopher of technology Andrew Feenberg has remarked, "the design and configuration of technology does more than merely accomplish our ends; it also organizes society and subordinates its members to a technocratic order" (1999, p. 17). 6
But this problematic has been largely absent within the social approaches to the study of the internet. Reviewing these approaches, Brint (2001) argued that they fit within three possible discursive positions: cultural nationalist, cosmopolitan and post modernist. Each of these positions further open the door to particular perspectives on the study of the internet, from identity to political economy; they can be understood as general departure-points or social concerns that inform the researcher's approach to the study of the internet. None of them has inspired, as of now, a consistent literature on how the internet itself becomes spoken of, particularly in relation to existing discourses of nationalism.
1.2.1 The internet and the nation
The cultural nationalist position is concerned with the "recognition, protection, and preservation of the nation" (Brint, 2001, p. 4). At its core lies the idea that the internet, in its disregard for national borders and cultural boundaries, could potentially destabilize nations, understood as natural expressions of human difference.
An important stream of literature starting from these assumptions focused on developing a policy framework for "national responses to new information technologies"
(Price, 2002, p. 5). This type of work often looked at the internet from the perspective of
'national interest', proposing various solutions for coping with the problems raised by interconnectedness and information flows (e.g. Goggin, 2004; Mengin, 2004; Price,
2002).
Another set of studies focused on the creation and maintenance of national communities in cyberspace (e.g. Chan, 2005; Darling-Wolf, 2004; Fung, 2002; Hiller & 7
Franz, 2004; Mitra, 1997; Tynes, 2007; Whitaker, 2004). In this case, the internet was understood mostly in relation to the formation of online communities or as a virtual meeting place. Ananda Mitra argued that, with the internet, "a new set of possibilities for community and nation formation have emerged" (1997, p. 56). ICTs were seen as allowing those who are not physically located within their 'original' national space to connect to their 'home' communities: "the electronic communities produced by the diasporic people are indeed imagined connections that are articulated over the medium of the Internet, when the only tangible connection with the community is through the computer, a tool to image and imagine the group affiliation" (Mitra, 1997, p. 58).
From a slightly different perspective, Lisa Nakamura (2002) reintroduced the discussion of ethnicity and race as relevant categories for understanding online communication and interaction. While Nakamura's work did not adopt a cultural nationalist perspective, it can be understood as a reminder that, far from being a space of unlimited possibilities and anonymity, the internet was a social space where dominant discourses on race and ethnicity were just as important as in real life, often reproducing discriminatory or oppressive practices.
1.2.2 The internet and the global village
The cosmopolitan discourse was more optimistic and interested in the creation of a global
'information society' that allegedly represented "the demands of a growing international middle class with ecological, social, economic, ethical, and political concerns, that, they believe, are inexorably bound to an increasingly interdependent world" (Brint, 2001, p.
4). At the core of this position was the idea that the world, diverse as it may be, was 8 essentially brought together by our common humanity and by the technologically- mediated interdependence of the modern world (e.g. Wilhelm, 2004).
Within academia, probably the most influential representative of this discourse remains Manuel Castells (2000). Rehearsing Daniel Bell's idea of a socio-economic transition to the 'post-industrial society', Castells proposed an understanding of the contemporary world as a new social order structured around what he calls the 'network logic'. Adopting an economic perspective, he argued that the shift to the information society (namely, a society structured around information as the main economic resource) is reshaping not only the relations of production, but also identity and culture. In this model, ICTs were part of a revolution bringing about a shift from territorial or national forms of organization, to networks that transgress spaces or cultures.
Of course, Castells was not alone in advancing this view of disembodied virtual networks replacing traditional communities. Howard Rheingold, another important figure in the popularization of the internet, advanced these ideas in his discussion of 'virtual communities' as new social formations enabled by the internet: "whenever CMC technology becomes available to people anywhere, they inevitably build virtual communities with it, just as microorganisms inevitably create colonies" (Rheingold,
2000a, p. xx).
From an academic perspective, Barry Wellman and Caroline Haythornthwaite's
(2002) edited collection toned down Rheingold's optimistic rhetoric. The collection presented a more 'glocalized' picture of individuals, shifting between their local contexts and communities, and their fragmented, personal communities; yet, in the end, the editors argued that "the personalization, portability, ubiquitous connectivity, and imminent 9 wireless mobility of the internet [has] facilitated networked individualism as the basis of community. It is the individual, and neither the household, nor the group that is becoming the primary unit of connectivity: gleaning support, sociability, information and a sense of belonging" (2002, p. 34).
1.2.3 Post-modernist approaches
Finally, the post-modernist discourse discarded meta-narratives such as nationalism or globalization, declaring the end of identity and the opening of new technologically- mediated possibilities for social life (Brint, 2001, pp. 4-5).
A major line of research within this approach has been opened by Sherry Turkle's
(1995) research on identity in virtual environments. Cyberspace was seen as an anonymous space that had become a new playground for constructing and experimenting with the many facets of one's identity. Although Turkle did not consider the question of national identity, the image of identity as an individual project, removed from the constraints of the social structure or of the normative discourses about race, gender, class or ethnicity, echoed the idea that choice would eventually render nations obsolete.
The popularization of the label 'digital natives' as the new name for the generation of children who have grown up with the internet (Palfrey & Gasser, 2008) further recommended this idea. 'Digital natives' were seen as allegedly living their lives, building their identities and interacting with each other online. Yet, the description of who 'digital natives' are and how they will change the world never engaged with the question of how these allegedly new forms of identity relate to the existing forms of identification, such as nation, race or class. 10
A different line of research came from medium theorists, focusing on how the features of the internet changed the social structure. Joshua Meyrowitz's book No Sense of Place (1985) proposed that electronic media affect our sense of'place' and enhance our possibility of'travel'/ 'mobility', reshaping the idea of space-bound culture and transforming us into modern 'nomadic hunters and gatherers'. From within the same tradition, Ronald Deibert proposed that the inner features of ICTs (digitization, computerization and speed) were transforming the stage of international relations through the creation of an "integrated planetary web of digital electronic telecommunications"
(1997, p. 128). In this 'new' world, nations were seen as becoming virtual: "the hypermedia environment increasingly dissolves these shared 'public' or 'national' information experiences characteristic of the 'mass' media age, and replaces them with a bombardment of transnational, decentered, personalized 'narrowcasting' and two-way communications in the form of computer networks, video-on-demand, direct satellite broadcasting, and the so-called '500 channel' cable systems" (Deibert, 1997, p. 196).
Equally, nationalism was seen as replaced by "nichelism - a polytheistic universe of multiple and overlapping fragmented communities above and below the sovereign nation- state" (Deibert, 1997, p. 198)4.
In political science, celebratory approaches to the internet focused on the opportunities for new forms of political action. Timothy Luke, for instance, saw the emergence of cyberspace as the post-modern alternative to existing geopolitical structures; cyberspace, he argued, gives rise to "alternative types of individual and collective subjectivities" (1999, p. 27). In cyberspace, these alternative subjectivities can
4Deibert coins the concept of nichelism from the noun 'niche'. 11 bypass or otherwise resist the constraining subject positions opened before them by traditional social structures, thus opening up the revolutionary potential of a new form of socio-political organization. On the other hand, as Luke remarked, cyberspace also gave rise to new loci of struggle over power: "conditions of network connectivity, then, become a locus for social conflict as the power of rule-making, rule-applying or rule- interpreting devolve to network managers, systems operators or software designers, slipping away from traditional political jurisdictions still believing that cyberspaces served on their territory adhere to their legalities" (1999, p. 27; see also Sassen, 1999).
Warnings against embracing a celebratory and disembodied approach to the internet increasingly appeared in a variety of disciplines (e.g. Flew, 2008, pp. 27-28;
Mansell et al., 2007). For instance, geographers interested in the interplay between the new (abstract) spaces opened up by networks and the idea of territory put forward an important critique of this celebratory view. Stephen Graham drew attention to how spatial and territorial metaphors were shaping the current discourses about ICTs, arguing that such metaphors have to be understood as ideological constructs that "encapsulate normative concepts of how technologies do or should relate to society and social change"
(1998, p. 166). Others, such as Byron Miller, argued that "with the exception of cosmopolitans who may form relationships in and travel among diverse places around the world, the daily time-space paths of most people are distinctly local. The local remains the realm in which global 'flows' of all kinds are received, interpreted, and adapted"
(Miller, 2004, p. 230). 12
This review points to the fact that the internet has been investigated within different
disciplines, each asking questions around the alleged effects of this technology on society
or around the importance of the identities and relations we perform in cyberspace. Where nations and nationalisms have been an explicit topic of research, the focus has largely
been on their representation online (e.g. how nations are constructed on the internet; or, how we perform national identity online).
A few recent papers engage the question of how national borders come to shape the development of the internet (Halavais, 2000; Shklovski & Struthers, 2010; Steinberg
& Mcdowell, 2003). Standing as a singular contribution, Jerry Everard's book Virtual
States (2000) proposed that neither the 'nation-state' nor the 'internet' are stable, clear-cut
'entities'; instead, they were to be understood as ongoing projects produced at the
interface of discourses and social structures. From this perspective, the relevant question
becomes: how are the 'nation-state' and the 'internet' articulated in various social spheres
(military, economics, etc.)?
This thesis embraces this perspective of the 'internet' as an object of discourse.
This perspective is largely missing in the field of communication studies. As argued next,
the field of communication studies has mostly ignored the question of how media come
to be conceptualized and how this conceptualization further influences the development
of a particular medium (also Agar, 2005). The central question of this project is precisely
how a medium comes to be discursively constructed and what roles do the
discourses of nationalism and globalization play in this process. 13
1.3 The research project
This research project draws its inspiration from a note made by Ernest Gellner in his seminal work Nations and Nationalisms:
"it is the media themselves, the pervasiveness and importance of abstract,
centralized, standardized, one to many communication, which itself automatically
engenders the core idea of nationalism, quite irrespective of what in particular is
being put into the specific messages transmitted. The most important and
persistent message is generated by the medium itself, by the role which such
media have acquired in modern life" (1994, p. 127).
While Gellner's description of the media is highly problematic (not only that it assumes that media automatically lead to nationalism, but it also suggests their content is irrelevant), the idea that media become an important signifier of the nation remains, in my view, important. It is precisely this process through which a medium becomes associated with or disassociated from the 'nation' that interests me here. By scrutinizing it in terms of who gets to participate and under what conditions, we can gain an insight into the social concerns and the power lines permeating the social world.
An opening for this research question has been created by the previous work on technological nationalism (Adria, 2010; Charland, 1986; Young, 2003). This literature has focused on examining how technology becomes conceptualized in relation to the discourse of nationalism. More recently, science and technology studies (STS) (Bijker et al., 1989; Bijker & Law, 1992; Grint & Woolgar, 1997; Feenberg, 1999; Pinch & Bijker,
1987) has reformulated 'technology' (and, by extension media) as a social process, where different actors struggle to impose their definitions of what the technology should do, 14 further shaping the development of that technology. This places the concepts of
'ideology', 'culture' and 'discourse' at the core of discussions about technology (Feenberg,
1999; Grint & Woolgar, 1997).
This thesis adopts both the interest in the linkage between technology and nationalism, and the view of technology as a social process. It aims at looking at how the internet becomes conceptualized in the Canadian 'social imaginaries' (Taylor, 2002)5 by examining three particular social contexts: policy, media and everyday life. The assumption behind this question is that the ways in which the internet is made meaningful involve an interplay between, on the one hand, the prevailing discourses and the social structure, and, on the other, the contingent negotiations of power.
Theoretically as well as methodologically, this project uses the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault. Given Foucault's interest in the discursive dimension of social practices and classification systems, his theoretical model best suits the focus of this thesis. In particular, Foucault's model emphasizes the link between power, discourses and social structures; this corresponds to my particular approach to examine the discursive construction of the internet as a site of negotiations over the categories through which the world is to be understood, as well as over the distribution of power relations.
I propose that the discourses of nationalism and globalization have to be recuperated as an important aspect of how the internet comes to be understood. This is not something new: the history of communication media suggests that the nationalization of media has been a major force shaping the development and the current format of mass * In this thesis, the concept of social imaginaries' rests on the definition provided by Charles Taylor: "the ways in which people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative positions and images that underlie these expectations" (2002, p. 106). As Taylor further explains, the emphasis of this concept is on the shared ways in which we imagine the world. 15 media as 'national communication systems' (Carey, 1998). Thus, this thesis proposes the following research question:
• How does the internet become an object of discourse in relation to
nationalism, in the spheres of policy, media and everyday meaning-making in
Canada?
This research question is accompanied by a secondary question:
• How do globalization discourses appear in relation to this?
A set of subsequent concerns are formulated around the major research question. What is the role of nationalism in each of the three spheres analyzed here and to what effects in terms of power relations? Is nationalism disappearing or simply receding into the background of our understanding of the social world and of the role of technology in it?
How do nationalism and globalization relate to each other? What can the discursive construction of the internet tell us about social transformation? How do ideas, symbols and tropes associated with globalization and nationalism flow across social spheres? If they are transformed, what does this transformation mean in terms of the relation between discourses and structures?
1.3.1 Definitions
These research questions rely on four major concepts that are briefly defined here: internet, (object of) discourse, nationalism and globalization.
The internet. As already indicated, the internet is understood here as more than just a complex set of technologies (or of interconnected networks). Following the proposals of 16 STS scholars, it is seen as a social space where a plurality of spheres (e.g. industry, policy, individual context, popular culture, education etc.) and of actors negotiate the uses, functions and features of the artifacts (also Feenberg, 1999).
Within this STS literature, two particular approaches are of relevance: Keith Grint and Steve Woolgar's (1997) proposal that technology should be understood as text, and
Maria Bakardjieva's (2005) proposal the technology can also be understood as language6.
In the case of technology-as-text, the emphasis is on how preferred readings of technology are inscribed into artifacts. This view is applicable when investigating how the internet is being inscribed with meaning in policy documents and newspaper articles7.
The second approach places the emphasis on users and their individual reading of the
'technical text': in this case, users are "construed as speakers performing speech acts in which they appropriate the technical medium to achieve their own objectives"
(Bakardjieva, 2005, p. 26). This view introduces the questions of how people themselves make sense of the internet, and how these individual understandings connect to those formulated on the macro levels.
Discourse. The definition of the internet as text/ language opens the door to thinking of the internet as a discursive space, building on the intellectual legacy of Foucault's work.
This work replaces the problematic concept of 'ideology' with that of 'discourse', broadly defined as systematic ways of speaking about something (an object of discourse).
Importantly, discourses are simultaneously mechanisms of power and sites where the The two positions are, in my opinion, complementary and reminiscent of the Sassurian distinction between langne and parole. 7In fairness, Grint and Woolgar's (1997) interest is primarily in how particular social values are inscribed into the artifact. I think however that their definition can be extended to the question of how the meaning of an artifact is articulated. 17 power networks can be examined from an analytic perspective. Thus, the Foucaultian framework fits with the general concern of this thesis, namely a concern with how existing ways of understanding the world, as well as the social structures they (in)form, play into the construction of meaning for new technologies. For, as Michael J. Shapiro notes, the "prevailing modes of social control within a society or polity are reflected in the meanings embedded in its predominant explanations" (1981, p. 201).
In this thesis, Foucault's work on discourses serves as a basis for the theoretical model and methodological approach, being used primarily as an heuristic and analytic device: it enables me to refer to the complex processes through which the internet becomes conceptualized and talked about in a given society. It also points to the systematicity of these conceptualizations, and to their relation to power relations. In other words, the internet as text/ language is approached as an analytic space where different versions of the internet are proposed by various actors; crucially, these versions (may) make use of nationalist and globalization rhetorics to legitimize the function, the roles and the values associated with this technology.
Furthermore, the theoretical framework based on discourses also allows me to recuperate nationalism and globalization as discourses (see below) shaping the process of negotiating the functions and configurations of the new communication technology. As it will be detailed in the subsequent chapters, this framework is supplemented with insights from Stuart Hall's work on ideology and representation. In particular, Hall's discussion of articulation, interpellation and hegemony will be used in approaching the nation, the global and the internet as objects of discourse. Foucault's framework, as helpful as it may be as an heuristic model, has its limitations as a specific methodology: although Foucaultt 18 attempts to detail this method in The Archeology of Knowledge, applying it is practically impossible. Instead, Hall's conceptual model (particularly the idea of discursive positions as 'articulations') is more suitable for examining how something is being talked about and how what is said relates to wider discourses.
Nationalism and globalization. Far from being a transitory phenomena, nationalism is seen here as an intrinsic aspect of the configuration of modern world, proposing and legitimizing a social order which it presents as 'natural' and which brings along ethical, ontological and epistemological implications. These implications extend beyond the level of institutions; they shape our identity and our social relations. It is for this reason that nationalism requires our constant critical attention8. From this perspective, nationalism is more than merely an ideology employed the politicians: it is a way of thinking which prompts us to evaluate and make sense of our social world.
Importantly, nationalism has always implied an inter-national dimension. As detailed in Chapter 2, this international dimension was seen as enabling the creation of a peaceful world system (e.g. Shaffer, 1982). Yet, in recent years, the international seems to be disappearing, under the pressure of a new signifier: the global (e.g. Bigo & Walker,
2007; Walker, 2010). Thus, the relation between nationalism and globalization seems to have become one of exclusion; the nation and global forces often appear as two antagonistic forces, pushing the modern world into different directions. Various scholars have drawn attention to the fallacy of assuming that global processes replace national
8For instance, nationalism informs our understanding of who counts as a member of the community and of the traits which characterize individuals; thus, we can only know and trust those individuals with whom we belong and share our traits. Similarly, different moralities apply to different communities. 19 ones, proposing instead concepts such as glocalization, derealization, and disjuncture(s)
(Featherstone, 1995; Robertson, 1990, 1992; Rosenau, 1997).
In this thesis, nationalism and globalization are understood as discourses seeking to define their core concepts (i.e. the 'nation' and the 'global' respectively) through which particular claims over the distribution of power are being made (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 263; similarly Calhoun, 1997). As such, these discourses are approached in terms of their legitimating function in the construction of the 'internet' as an object of discourse.
1.3.2 Methodology
Given the approach outlined above, critical discourse analysis (CDA) appears as a suitable method for tackling the research question, primarily because of its understanding of language as embedding a particular way of thinking about and acting upon the world.
This methodology also draws from Foucault's work, which makes it compatible with the theoretical approach of this thesis (Chilton, 2005). In a nutshell, CDA is not only interested in the analysis of the grammatical, rhetorical or argumentative arrangements in a text, but also in connecting them to the distribution of power in society. Thus, the goal of CDA is to bring to light those social dynamics that ensure the reproduction or the transformation of the social order. This is similar to my goals here: to understand how a medium becomes conceptualized in relation to the existing structures, and how this conceptualization feeds back into the existing social dynamics and power relations.
Nevertheless, CDA remains an umbrella term for a variety of specific methods. In general, such methods focus on a), how a text is being composed in terms of both grammar and arguments; b). interpreting these textual/ logical arrangements in relation to 20 elements of the existing social structure. Because this project is interested in how the internet becomes spoken of through two established discourses, the form of CDA used here focuses on how conceptual relations are being established among the main concepts
- internet, nation and global. This decision also rests on Foucault's (1972) model of discursive formations as systematic sets of statements, concepts and themes formed around an object. Although Foucault developed this model in relation to specific disciplines (e.g. medicine), thinking of the internet as a discursive formation is a particularly fruitful way of interrogating the social context within which an understanding of this medium comes to be formulated.
Relations between concepts are understood here as informed not solely by grammatical and use considerations, but also by specific power-related interests. The way in which we articulate conceptual relations - and particularly the ways in which we incorporate new concepts into the existing web of relations - cannot be divorced from the worldviews we espouse. As Foucault further recommends, such conceptual relations need to be interrogated in terms of who has the authority to formulate them, how they are delimited from other possible types of relations, and what specific articulations they propose (1972, p. 44). Importantly, these relations are taken as intersecting with the
"institutions, economic and social processes, behavioural patterns, systems of norms, techniques, types of classification, modes of characterization" (Foucault, 1972, p. 45).
The case study: The topic and questions are examined in the specific case of Canada. As mentioned before, the historical context of Canada is a crucial reason for its selection as a case: the relation between communication media and nationalism has been central to the 21 construction and reproduction of Canadian identity. It is not only the case that communication media have been understood from a nation-building perspective, but also that the discourse of Canadian nationalism is both relatively young and continuously contested from various perspectives (immigration, Aboriginal populations and French
Canadian nationalism being the three major factors at play here). In other words, the possibility as well as the particular content of a 'Canadian identity' remain widely contested; this, I contend, makes nationalism a 'hot' topic.
From an academic perspective, there is a longstanding tradition in the Canadian context of thinking of communication media in relation to social aspects (see the work of
Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan). Last, but not least, from a statistical perspective,
Canada has been at the forefront of ICTs adoption (Internet World Statistics, 2007;
Underhill & Ladds, 2007). Following the lead of its neighbour, the United States, the government of Canada made the internet a priority in 1994. At the same time, the policy debates over the function and roles of the internet in Canadian society have not settled yet; recent proposals around copyright and traffic management have placed the internet back onto the agenda of politicians, bureaucrats, media and citizens.
The choice of Canada as a case study remains instrumental. According to Robert
Stake, such cases are "examined mainly to provide an insight into an issue or to redraw a generalization. The case is of secondary interest, it plays a supportive role, and it facilitates our understanding of something else. The case still is looked at in depth, its contexts are scrutinized and its ordinary activities detailed, but all because this helps us pursue the external interest" (2005, p. 445). The major interest of this thesis remains in questioning how a medium becomes conceptualized in relation to existing discourses. 22
What Canada as a case study has to offer is the mix of social circumstances that connects a policy interest in the internet with nationalism and globalization discourses.
The choice of social spheres: This thesis examines the conceptual relations established between the main concepts of 'internet', 'nation' and 'global' in the context of three social spheres: policy, media and everyday life. The choice of these spheres is not accidental: policy remains the major sphere organizing our lives and steering institutions; for better or worse, media constitute the public sphere where such policy decisions, as well as other views and opinions, are discussed. Finally, everyday life is the dimension where individuals make sense of and act within the world around them. In a Foucaultian manner, the ways in which we make sense of things in this context constitute the foundation upon which power relations are being formed.
Data: Within each of these three spheres, I have selected different sets of data. In the
case of policy, I have focused on seven policy documents on ICTs produced by the
Canadian federal government9. The selection of this data was informed by the previous
literature on the role of nationalism in the policy environment on communication media
at the federal level. In the case of media, I have selected the newspaper coverage of these particular policy documents and the dynamics around them. A total of 134 articles across the printed press in Canada was identified through search of the Canadian Newsstand
database. Finally, the last set of data consisted of 29 interviews with internet users across
9 Namely, the government's 1994 agenda on ICTs, the two reports of the Information Highway Advisory Council, the two responses of the government to these reports, the 1995 CRTC competition report, and the 2001 report on broadband 23
Canada. The sample was a convenience one; the demographic represented by this sample was young (20s-30s), urban, and in the higher-education sector (students or staff).
Method of analysis: The aim of the analysis was to bring to light the conceptual relations proposed by the documents or by the participants, by paying attention to the three levels of a text/ utterance: grammar, semantics, and arguments. The analysis of policy and newspaper texts was informed by the discourse-analysis model proposed by Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer (2009) and the relational analysis model proposed by Kathleen
Carley (Carley, 1986, 1997; Carley & Palmquist, 1992). Its aim was to address
Fairclough's advice that "closer attention to texts sometimes helps to give firmer grounding to the conclusions arrived at without it" (1994, p. 194).
Thus, this analysis aimed at bringing to light the conceptual relations proposed by these texts between the concepts of the 'internet', the 'Canadian nation' and the 'global'.
These relations were subsequently interpreted along the lines of the following three questions:
• How are the concepts brought together in the selected texts?
• What is the meaning of this relation?
• What argument or worldview they recommend? (if applicable)
The analysis tool was slightly altered to assess the interviews. The interview itself was conceived of as an exploration of the conceptual relations proposed by the researcher.
The introduction of these conceptual relation should not be understood as determining the responses; the questions "do not tell respondents what to say, but offers them pertinent ways of conceptualizing issues and making connections - that is, suggests possible 24 horizons of meaning and narrative linkages that coalesce into the emerging responses"
(Holstein & Gubrium, 1999, p. 118). The interviews were thus analyzed with an eye to both what is said and how it is said. The analysis was done in two stages: first, all the interviews were read, taking note of the topics of discussions and of the different types of identity performances. In the second stage, the discussion of the various conceptual relations was analyzed in terms of how respondents related to and expanded upon the proposed conceptual relations (e.g. accept it and elaborate upon it; or reject it and explain why).
1.4 Thesis structure
The thesis proceeds with a detailed discussion of how the field of communication studies and the field of nationalism studies are setting the context for the research angle adopted here. Thus, Chapter 2 reviews the ways in which specific communication theoretical models approach the problematic of nations and nationalism and, vice-versa, the ways in which nationalism theories engage with communication media. As this chapter shows, in spite of a shared interest in the question of the reproduction of nationalism, neither field has produced a viable research agenda that explores the multiple relations between nationalism and media.
Chapter 3 outlines the theoretical model informing this research project. The core argument here is that the Foucaultian model of discourses may be of help in conceptualizing not only nationalism and globalization, but the role of discourses in the social construction of technology. This model is then discussed within the context of the
Marxist problematic of'ideology' and further refined through the work of Stuart Hall. As 25
I hope to show, Hall's work complements the discursive model in two important ways: first, it provides a way of conceptualizing the flow of ideas, symbols and meanings from the micro to the macro levels; second, it provides a more applicable apparatus to the analysis of text than Foucault's detailed model. Building on this theoretical framework,
Chapter 4 outlines the methodological approach of this thesis.
The subsequent chapters outline the context of the case study and present the results of the analysis. Thus, Chapter 5 offers an overview of communication media in
Canada. Chapter 6, 7 and 8 present the results of the analysis of the policy documents, the newspaper reports and the interviews. Each of these chapters moves from providing the context for the respective data set, to showing what conceptual relations are being established and how.
A discussion of the significance of these results in terms of their theoretical and methodological implications is presented in Chapter 9. The first topic addressed in this chapter is social change: how can social change be understood in relation to nationalism, and to what extent the results can be interpreted as a process of hegemonic discursive adaptation. In the second part of the chapter, I move to a discussion of the communicative flows across the three examined social spheres. In this context, I propose that a more fruitful way of conceptualizing these communicative flows sees each social sphere as a meaning-making system in a constant process of adjustment to the others. As the collective conceptualizations of the internet in each sphere becomes adapted to and integrated into the specific concerns of policy, media or everyday life, social order is reproduced. In its last section, I will make suggestions for operationalizing the concepts 26 of'discourse' and 'power' in the context of a critical discourse analysis of the social construction of the internet.
Finally, the conclusion provides a summary of this thesis, outlining the contributions it brings to the research question, as well as to the existing literature on the internet. 27
Chapter 2: Nationalism and Communication
As previously mentioned, Gellner's (1994) remark on the centrality of media to the maintenance of the nation has been an important departure point of this thesis. My main contention is that this centrality is, in fact, a problematic that requires further critical investigation: how does a medium become associated with the nation? Neither nationalism studies, nor communication studies directly engage with this question, although interesting suggestions are made in both fields.
In this chapter, I provide an overview of the major trends in each of these two fields. The first section surveys the main debates and models within nationalism studies, with an emphasis on how they have dealt with communication media. In his own survey of the field, nationalism scholar Anthony Smith has concluded that although the diversity of approaches is important, often times "these concerns are confined to a particular terrain, and the studies that reflect these approaches resemble monologues" (2008, p.
328). The second part of this chapter moves to a review of the field of communication studies, focusing on how the problematic of nations and nationalisms has been approached in this context. The intellectual trajectory of the concept of'nation' in the various communication theories reviewed here shifts from an essentialist definition of nations as bounded and natural communities, to a definition emphasizing the socially constructed nature of the concept, and the contingent and heterogeneous nature of the groups to which it may apply. Nevertheless, the problematic of nations and nationalism remains marginal, while communication media are largely conceived of as nation- building tools (Schlesinger, 1991). And, although many studies look at the reproduction 28 of nationalism through media content, nationalism itself is not considered in the theoretical reflection on communication media. The question of how this discourse may in fact shape, constrain or enable communication media remains largely unexplored.
2.1 Communication media in the field of nationalism studies
The most notable consensus in the field of nationalism studies is over the difficulty of agreeing on a definition for the concepts of nation, nationalism, national identity, national culture or nation-state. In fact, as Smith has remarked, there is a "perennial failure on the part of scholars to agree a set of definitions of the main concepts in the field, reflecting the variety of approaches adopted over the last 150 years" (2008, p. 318). As Smith further explains, what can be loosely called 'the field of nationalism studies' has been characterized by multi-disciplinarity and a shift between explanatory and normative approaches. However, on the other hand, this interest in providing definitions and taxonomies of nations and nationalisms has, for a rather long time, distracted scholars from inquiring into the continuous provisionality and the instability of nations and nationalisms as incomplete projects whose (re)production depends on their lived, practical dimension10.
Outside the field of nationalism studies, nations and nationalism have been pervasive, unexamined assumptions framing social science research (Banton, 2007;
Beck, 2007; Billig, 1995; Brubaker & Cooper, 2000; Chernilo, 2006, 2007; Norkus,
2004; Norman, 2006; Shapiro, 2004; Schlesinger, 1991; Wimmer & Schiller, 2002). This
10 See for example Daniel Chernilo's account of the usefulness of Max Weber's insistence on the provisionality of any definition of the 'nation' and on the insistence to preserve doubt as to whether these concepts refer to a reality-out-there: "Weber's sociological reflections on the nation give the impression that, overall, he was skeptical on the possibilities of arriving at definite results" (Chernilo, 2007, p. 53). 29 assumption, criticized as a form of methodological nationalism, takes the nation as "the natural social and political form of the modern world" (Wimmer & Schiller, 2002, p.
302). This critique, developed from the 1970s on, has drawn attention to how research agendas "have been closely attached to, and shaped by, the experience of modern nation- state formation" (Wimmer and Schiller, 2002, p.303). As argued in the second part of the chapter, communication studies has more than often adopted a methodologically nationalist stance.
2.1.1 Emergence of the field
The critical engagement with nationalism — referred to as nationalism studies - represents an attempt to challenge such assumptions. Prior to the First World War11, nationalism
"was regarded as a component of national history rather than a distinct subject" (Breuilly,
2006, p. xvi) and its study was often intermingled with the emergence of nationalism movements themselves (Pinson, 1935). The early scholastic approaches that transformed
'nationalism' into a topic of analysis approached it from an historical perspective, focusing on explaining how particular nationalisms and nation-states came into being.
The major proposal advanced at the time was the realization that nations are not 'as old as history', but that their modern meaning was quite recent, becoming predominant from the
18th century onward (Hobsbawm, 1990).
Nationalism was seen almost exclusively as a political ideology; scholars such as historian Hans Kohn (1891-1971) and political theorist Elie Kedourie (1926-1992)'2 tried " The outcome of the First World War legitimized the 'nationality principle' as the reason for the claim to a state. The creation of the League of Nations added further international recognition of this principle. 12 Other important scholars working on nationalism in the same period, but not discussed here, include historians Edward H. Carr (1892-1982), Hugh-Seton Watson (1916-1984), Calton J. Hayes (1882-1964), Louis Leo Snyder (1907-1993), Boyd C. Shafer (1907-1992) and political theorist Kenneth Minogue 30 to clarify the conditions under which nationalism as a political ideology had become dominant. In his monumental work, Kohn (1944) traced the history and development of the main concepts within nationalism from Antiquity onward. While widespread nationalism was for him an eighteenth century phenomenon, its themes and symbols had historical roots. Kohn's major contribution was to show that the concepts 'nation', 'state',
'homeland' or even 'democracy' had been articulated together only in recent times. As an ideology, nationalism had invested a particular set of meanings into such concepts and narratives. Echoing this view, contemporary historian Eric Hobsbawm argued that
"nationalism comes before nations. Nations do not make states and nationalisms, but the other way around" (1990, p. 10).
Similarly, Kedourie looked at nationalism in an historical context; unlike Kohn, he focused on its intellectual legacy, effectively showing that nationalism is, in essence,
"a reflection on the human condition" (Kitromilides, 1998, p. 95). Kedourie's major contribution at this point was a detailed analysis of the claims put forward by the major nationalist writers of the 19th century. Thus, Kedourie defined nationalism as:
"a doctrine invented in Europe at the beginning of the 19th century [that] pretends
to supply a criterion for the determination of the unit of population proper to
enjoy a government exclusively of its own, for the legitimate exercise of power in
the state and for the right organization of a society of states. Briefly, the doctrine
holds that humanity is naturally divided into nations, that nations are known by
certain characteristics which can be ascertained, and that the only legitimate type
of government is national self-government" (1960, p. 1).
(1930-). 31
2.1.1.1 Mapping the logic of nationalism
Although this early critical engagement with nationalism had nothing to say about communication or media, it remains important in terms of exploring the ideas, symbols, themes and assumptions that nationalism brings together. For the purposes of this thesis, it is important to review here what this 'logic of nationalism' proposes.
It is common among historians and political scientists to regard the intellectual legacy of the German Romanticists and of the French Revolution as the moment when nationalism was crystallized13. As the above quote summarizes, nationalism is approached solely as a political doctrine that aims at simultaneously describing and legitimizing a particular way of organizing the political units. Importantly, nationalism informs not only the drawing of boundaries around these units, but also the principles according to which these units relate to each other in an inter-national world. For the purposes of this thesis, it is important to emphasize that nationalism, as a political doctrine, presupposes an inter-national system of nation-states. The promise nationalism brings is that by organizing the world into nation-states, this world becomes peaceful and stables, while equality and democracy are preserved. This promise is legitimized by defining humanity as naturally divided into bounded and territorial communities, sharing particular features (ethnicity, language, culture, history, religion) stemming from their alleged common history. These alleged natural boundaries are subsequently offered as a reason for the necessity of achieving political sovereignty.
i3 Adrian Hastings (1997) has made the argument that nations and nationalisms can be traced back to Medieval Ages, particularly in the case of England. 32
Importantly, these communities are portrayed as being in an organic relation to the territory they inhabit14. Not only that the territory shapes the people living there, endowing them with specific features (e.g. determination, endurance etc.), but people also shape the territory, transforming it into a 'homeland'. As Kohn (1944) explains, nationalism is not only a political ideology, but also a state of mind: the nation is an intersubjective concept that claims to refer to a natural social formation which will eventually take control of its own destiny and form its own sovereign state on its
'traditional' territory. As already mentioned, at the centre of this concept lies the conviction (or the promise) that the nation-state is the best possible form of political organization, which will ensure equality, freedom and economic well-being for all its members (Kohn, 1944; Kedourie, 1960).
As Kohn further argues, nationalism plays upon assumed primal needs of belonging to a group and upon assumed desires for freedom and equality. What is specific about the way these needs and desires within the context of nationalism is that they are re-defined in relation to the concept of the 'nation'. Nationalism promises to fulfil these needs and desires if, and only if, the political, economic and cultural organization of the polis becomes congruent with the allegedly pre-existing national community (Kohn,
1944, p. 18).
Thus, nationalism becomes a source of ontological security, as well as the discourse of legitimacy for the modern state: a doctrine about "how best a society should
14 Importantly, the nation can inhabit a territory physically, but also symbolically This caveat becomes particularly interesting in the conceptualization of information and communication technologies as bringing about 'new' (transnational) forms of political participation. The emphasis on the newness of the medium erases the fact that nationalism has always accommodated diasponc communities and migratory populations in this sense, the political investment of people has been understood as stemming primarily from their national belonging, and not necessarily from their physical location 33 conduct its politics, and realize its aims." (Kedourie, 1960, p. 5). Furthermore, nationalism offers a way of classifying the social world: "a nation [...] becomes a natural division of the human race, endowed by God with its own character which its citizens must, as a duty, preserve pure and inviolable. Since God has separated the nations, they should not be amalgamated" (Kedourie, 1960, p. 51).
However, the normativity that nationalism brings along is of uttermost importance, particularly in terms of its ethical implications. For, if individuals inevitably belong to and are defined by certain nations, then whomever is not part of that national community remains a stranger forever: "nationalism, then, does not make easy the relations of different groups in mixed areas. Since it advocates a recasting of frontiers and a redistribution of political power to conform with the demands of a particular nationality, it tends to disrupt whatever equilibrium had been reached between different groups, to reopen settled questions and to renew strife.[...] Far from increasing political stability and political liberty nationalism in mixed areas makes for tensions and mutual hatred" (Kedourie, 1960, pp. 110 - 111).
The most important legacy of this early work is to remind scholars that nationalism is not a natural and inevitable 'awakening of the nations', but a phenomenon intrinsically connected to historical circumstances15. To summarize, the logic of nationalism relies on linking together various elements such as the nation, its defining features forming a 'national culture', the territory it inhabits, the state it creates (the
15 Such as a growing discontent among intellectual elites of the 19th century with the existing social arrangements (e.g. the feudal system or an international stage dominated by empires), the increased expectations of happiness, individual freedom and progress within the context of a democratic polis opened up by the principles of the Enlightenment and by Kant's ideas, the advance of reason and the retreat of religious worldviews etc. 34 nation-state) and the relation between the nation and the foreigners (the us/ them relation). As subsequent work in the field of nationalism studies shows, all of these elements are highly problematic and can be brought together in various ways16.
In this thesis, I will often refer to how these elements are articulated in the context of anglophone Canadian nationalism; in so doing, I am not implying that there is such a thing as a homogeneous 'Canadian culture', or that the 'Canadian nation(-state)' is an accomplished and homogeneous project. Rather, in such cases, I am placing the emphasis on how these concepts are articulated within the wider discourse of Canadian nationalism. For example, my use of the concept of'nation-state' does not imply that
Canada is an unproblematic state of one nation; rather, I am merely interested in emphasizing that in particular contexts (federal policy and the English-language media discussed here, but to some extent also the everyday conversations with both English and
French speakers), the understanding of the state as an institution cannot be divorced from a nationalist perspective. In such contexts, the use of this concept refers to the view that states "bind the allegiance of their citizens through a shared identity, often styled as national, notwithstanding underlying ethnic or national diversity in their populations"
(Hearn, 2006, p. 9).
Of course, as we shall see next, the questions of who produces the discourse of
Canadian nationalism, and for what purposes remain as important as understanding the historical context within which such a discourse is made possible at all.
"For instance, an important line of discussion in nationalism studies is concerned with the various forms of nationalisms. The classic division is that between rational/ civic versus emotional/ ethnic nationalisms; there are many variations of this division: voluntaristic versus blood-related (Ignatieff, 1994); state- centered, assimilationist versus ethno-cultural, differentialist (Brubaker, 1996); individualistic-libertarian versus collectivist-authoritarian (Greenfeld, 1992); Western versus Eastern (Kellas, 1991). 35
2.1.2 Current debates and trends in nationalism studies
Focusing primarily on dissecting the claims and assumptions embedded in nationalist thought, the early critical engagements with nations and nationalism ignored the question of nationalism outside the political sphere. Furthermore, there was no interest in the relation between ideas and the material infrastructure. The next wave of nationalism scholars built on this legacy, but shifted their attention to questions such as when and how nationalism emerges; how it spreads from elites to masses; and why it commands such loyalty and passion.
Thus, in the 1970s and 1980s, nationalism was interrogated in terms of how it affects, shapes and directs modern societies. The emphasis was placed on explaining the interweaving of nationalism as a doctrine and modernization as a social process. As
Breuilly contends, the political potency of nationalism elicited most attention:
"understanding nationalism began with the ideas and the intellectuals who expressed those ideas, and moved on to consider how they changed the world" (Breuilly, 2006, p. xx). The role of communication media was often understood in terms of the reproduction of nationalism. By the end of the 1990s, the fall of communism and the surge in inter- ethnic violence in the world renewed the interest in the political (and especially conflictual) dimension of nationalism.
However, a growing interest in the cultural dimension of nationalism also began to take shape (Smith, 1992b, 2008). Perhaps the most notable influence here was
Benedict Anderson's famous definition of the nation as an 'imagined community', which has opened the door to recuperating culture, communication and everyday life as 36 important dimensions of nations and nationalism. And, although Anderson remained concerned with the relation between nationalism and modernization, subsequent scholarship increasingly focused on the contemporary role of nationalism in our societies.
Like other disciplines in social sciences, the field of nationalism studies was also permeated by post-modernist and feminist contributions that usually involved a rejection of "broad theoretical accounts of nations and nationalism" (Smith, 2008, p. 323). Yet, this
'fragmented landscape' (Smith, 2008) of nationalism studies remains focused on several debates.
• The theoretical debate on the nature and timing of nations (Gorski, 2000; Hearn,
2006; Jaffrelot, 2003; Ozkirimli, 2005; Smith, 1998, 2008). The controversy
stems primarily from the different take on the existential status of nations: are
nations 'natural' groups or are they socially engineered? This further prompts the
question of their origins and the question of their development (Ichijo & Uzelac,
2005).
• The classification debate, where different types of nationalism are discussed and
categorized (e.g. ethnic, civic, anti-colonial, separatist etc.)'7 This debate
addresses the criticism that nationalism does not look the same everywhere in the
world. In creating typologies of nationalism, scholars recognize that the specific
context (whether political, cultural or historical) influences not only the purpose,
but also the content of nationalism (e.g. Smith, 1971 ).
17 John Breuilly's Nationalism and the State (1982) is probably one of the most comprehensive attempts to provide a taxonomy of nationalism as a political doctrine and movement. 37
• Finally, the debate over the status of nationalism within the context of
globalization (Ozkirimli, 2005). The proponents of the erosion/ weakening thesis
and the proponents of the cosmopolitan thesis confront each other over three
theses: nationalism as an obsolete phenomenon, as a form of local resistance or as
the other side of allegedly novel socio-economic processes (often brought
together under the banner of'globalization')18.
In the following sections, I will engage primarily with the debate over the nature and timing of nations, since this debate permeates all other discussions in the field. I will also discuss the debate on the relation between nationalism and globalization, since both of these discourses are central to this research project. In so doing, my main aim is to bring to light the ways in which communication media has been discussed in the field of nationalism studies.
2.1.2.1 The debates over the nature and timing of nations
Reflections on the nature of nations and nationalism have been traditionally divided into two main camps: the modernists (Anderson, 1983; Gellner, 1983), who take nations as modern processes connected to the dynamics of industrialization and capitalism, and the ethnosymbolists, who take nations as modern phenomena formed around an historic ethnocultural core (Hastings, 1997; Smith, 1986)'9. According to Smith (2008), the
18 The first camp focuses primarily on the dissolution of national sovereignty and the weakening of nationalism, the latter is more concerned with the co-existence of different types of social bonds (local/ global) and their ethical implications As Ozkirimli (2005) notes, the view of globalization espoused by the scholar (e g globalization as desirable, inevitable, imperialistic etc ) frames her particular approach to nationalism 19 This classification glosses over other possible positions essentialists (who take nations as communities emerging naturally through time), perennialists (who take nations as historical communities), pnmordiahsts (exemplified by the German Romantics, who saw nations as linguistic communities), constructivists (who emphasize the social constructed nature of nations) (see Smith, 1998, Ozkirimli, 2005) 38 approach and concerns of the modernists open the door to reflections on the role of state and on the role of culture in understanding the emergence of nations and the scope of nationalism. On the other hand, the ethnosymbolists also emphasize the role of culture, and particularly the "boundary mechanisms of symbols, myths and communication"
(Smith, 2008, p. 322). This growing interest in the cultural dimension of nations and nationalism shifts the emphasis from political processes to the question of how nationalism is reproduced through media and in the context of everyday life (Billig, 1995;
Edensor, 2002; Palmer, 1998).
2.1.2.1.1 Nations and Nationalisms as Modern Processes
Historically, the modernist thesis has been developed against the prevailing approach to nations as 'natural' communities. Building on the critical work of Kohn and Kedourie, modernists rejected the view that nations are 'historic', homogeneous and bounded communities. Instead, they proposed that nations are socially engineered in the process of social transformation from feudal to industrial structures.
The modernist thesis has been eloquently developed by Ernest Gellner (1925-
1995), who has argued that: "...nations can be defined only in terms of the age of nationalism, rather than, as you might expect, the other way around" (Gellner, 1983, p.
55). For Gellner, nations and nationalism become relevant only in the context of social arrangements associated with industrialization. The latter is seen as favouring the emergence of "standardized, homogeneous, centrally sustained high cultures, pervading entire populations and not just elite minorities" (Gellner, 1983, p. 55). Thus, nations become both the product and the driver of industrialization. Since industrialization 39 requires a labour force which is both mobile and skilled20 (i.e. able to perform various jobs in different locations), feudal structures can not address these needs and are replaced by the pair nations/ nationalisms21.
From this perspective, nationalism appears as a form of legitimation for a new social arrangement; furthermore, Gellner sees this new arrangement as strongly dependent on the institution of the state. Nationalism thus provides the necessary ideological glue enabling the formation of new social bonds that best respond to the needs of modern industrial processes (Gellner, 1983, pp. 33-4, 125). By proposing a political unit that is also (allegedly) homogeneous from a cultural point of view, nationalism creates the conditions, as well as the space within which labour can become mobile: people are no longer tied to land and they are able to move from one specialization to another, since they share the same communicative space. To put it differently, if in the feudal context, this communicative space was confined to the boundaries of the village or of the feudal unit, within the modern state, this space is (at least in theory) co-extensive with the boundaires of the state. Importantly, as Gellner argues, the creation of this shared communicative space is the process through which the
'nation' itself is created.
Yet, although Gellner briefly mentions the role of communication media in this context, the emphasis is placed primarily on the state administration and on the education system as the major social mechanisms through which nations and nationalism come into
20According to Gellner, literacy is one of such crucial skills, which enables not only the use of technology, but also the integration of the mobile labor into the social setting. 2lFeudal structures are seen as resting upon fixity both in space and in specialization (with many of the trades being hereditary). To achieve mobility and skills, people should be able to transgress some social boundaries more easily (or at least, be given this impression) and to come to different places and jobs with pre-existing intellectual skills and technical know-how. 40 being. Communication processes remain understood as a crucial characteristic of industrialization: the industrial society requires workers that are not only able to interact with each other, but also with the available technology. As Gellner concludes, "for the first time in human history, explicit and reasonably precise communication becomes generally, pervasively used and important" (1983, p. 33).
In the context of this thesis, it is interesting to remark that Gellner's model is not at all inconsistent with the current debates on the relation between nationalism and globalization. In particular, Gellner's suggestion that nationalism is tied to the rise of the industrial society is consistent with the idea that the post-industrial (or, rather, the information) society will lead to the demise of nationalism. Furthermore, the functionalist approach to which Gellner subscribes raises the problematic question of whether nations and nationalisms are, to some extent, inevitable social formations, as a consequence of other socio-economic processes. To some extent, this view facilitates an approach to nations and nationalisms as something that have been brought by industrialization and can thus be removed by the 'post-industrial' dynamics. In my view, the important question to ask is whether this 'post-industrial' (or the information/ network) society does indeed constitute a different social structure or not. Ironically, it is also the globalization debate that brings to the forefront a question that Gellner's macro-approach brushed aside: What is the relation between nationalism as an historical process produced primarily by institutions and intellectuals, and its everyday understandings and articulations?
From a rather different perspective, another scholar has also emphasized the role of communication in the constitution of modern nations. The work of Karl Deutsch 41
(1912-1992) has remained marginal in the field of nationalism studies22; a political scientist, Deutsch was inspired by Norbert Wiener's cybernetics theory and tried to apply it to the study of nations (Deutsch, 1986). Like Gellner, Deutsch saw nations and nationalisms as modern phenomena; unlike Gellner, he retained an essentialist view of nations as evolving out of previous forms of organization (Deutsch, 1969). Yet, the nation was not to be defined along ethnic lines; instead, Deutsch proposed that nations have to be understood as naturally evolving communicative spaces.
In this model, communication and culture were seen as the two sides of the same coin: culture was the context ensuring efficient communication, while sustained patterns of communication (in)formed the culture (Deutsch, 1953). Thus, where for Gellner nations appeared as an almost inevitable consequence of industrialization (Frost, 2001)23, for Deutsch they seemed a natural consequence of social integration, facilitated by a shared communicative space (1969, pp. 4-27)24. In Deutsch's view, the nation was a social formation emerging out of sustained patterns of communication. In other words, nations emerged in cases where people have learned to communicate beyond a simple material exchange: they shared meaning.
A consequence of this view was the recommendation that people of the same nation are 'efficiently' communicating with each other - they can more easily understand
22 However, his work spurred a lot of interest in political communication and policy analysis, where it provided an enduring paradigm for thinking about government as an "exercise in steering guided by communication flows and feedbacks" (Mellon, 2003; also Deutsch, 1986; Galnor, 1980; Hur, 1982). 23 This problem may stem from Gellner's functionalism (Breuilly, 1982; Frost, 2001; Jaffrelot, 2003; van den Bossche, 2003). With its macro analytic approach, Gellner's discussion of the link between industrialization and nationalism appears to leave little room for any possible alternative articulations of the industrial society. 24These integrative processes are: the development of countries, the integration of dialects and languages into one national languages, the integration of elites, cultural integration, social integration of communities into nations, administrative integration (Deutsch, 1969, pp. 4-27). 42 one another (Deutsch, 1953, p. 72). Nationalism no longer appeared as a political doctrine, but as an integrative drive, emerging out of the historical development of communities and working by "fulfill [ing] the emotional need in the individual and a need for service in domestic politics" (Deutsch, 1969, p. 32).
Although this model placed communication as a process at the heart of nations and nationalism, it remained highly problematic in its assumption of a homogeneous cultural/ communicative space (in)forming the nation. If anything, Deutsch's model resonates more with the nationalist ideas of German Romanticism than with the critical drive in nationalism studies. It is important to emphasize in this context that Deutsch wanted to "develop a social science of nationalism and nationality capable of showing the probable consequences of decisions" (Deutsch, 1953, p. 14). In other words, he was interested in coming up with precise tools for achieving social order. As we shall see next, communication scholars (and particularly the message-transmission school) were no strangers to the goal of outlining the tools for preserving social order. The question that is never asked however is whose 'social order' is under consideration.
A more successful incorporation of culture and communication into the research agenda of the field has been proposed by Benedict Anderson. In his book Imagined
Communities, Anderson suggested that nations should be understood as "cultural artefacts" (1983, p. 4). Thus, nations are "an imagined political community - and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign" (1983, p. 6). Importantly, Anderson also enlarged the understanding of nationalism beyond its political dimension: nationalism, he argued, should be understood as a worldview akin to religion or kinship.
In other words, he proposed that nationalism is best approached as a worldview about the 43 position of human beings in the world, about their social relations and about ontological anxieties (1983, p. 10); against the void left by the displacement of religious explanations of the world, nationalism addressed the "secular transformation of fatality into continuity, contingency into meaning" (1983, p. 11).
Like Gellner, Anderson saw nations and nationalism as modern phenomena, connected to the erosion of feudal structures and worldviews (religion included). But
Anderson proposes two other factors of relevance to the emergence of nations and nationalisms: the changing perception of time/space, marked by techno-scientific developments, and the emergence of print as a capitalist enterprise. Interestingly,
Anderson suggested that these two processes had an effect on people's imagination: they opened up the possibility of thinking on 'the large scale' (i.e. beyond the confines of spatial and temporal borders). Yet, this possibility alone did not 'produce' nationalism: it was rather a convergence of social imaginaries and of specific material circumstances that led to the widespread popularization of nationalism. The relation between what is possible to imagine and the material circumstances in which this possibility emerges is an important part of the argument of this thesis, particularly in the context of everyday understandings of the internet and its role in relation to the Canadian nation25
25 This important relation between ideas and material conditions is often forgotten institutional arrangements may reflect particular ways of thinking, but once institutionalized, these ways of thinking are ngidified, producing particular social arrangements that are often experienced by individuals as inevitable and natural To exemplify, Anderson (1983) talks about the complex relation between vernacular languages and administrative centralization in the Austro-Hunganan empire In 1780s, the empire switched the state administration language from Latin to German Initially, the purpose was not to 'Germanize' the population in the empire, but to unify the empire's administration The national element was lacking However, as German became adopted throughout the administration, speakers of other languages felt excluded from power On the other hand, German speakers started imagining themselves as a group sharing a 'superior character' over other linguistic groups Language has become political 44
These material circumstance, Anderson argued, were transformed by the advancement of the capitalist model of print, whose secondary effect was the standardization and mass diffusion of nationalism. A combination of factors (among which the growth of the reading publics, technological developments, the expansion of commerce and of state machineries) created the conditions for books printed in vernacular languages to become profitable. However, this also opened up the possibility of audiences to imagine themselves as 'communities' sharing not only a language, but also a culture and a history. Gradually, these ideas were taken up by elites and transformed into a tool for legitimizing the state and the distribution of power; in other words, nationalism developed into an 'official discourse' (Anderson, 1983, pp. 109-110).
In the context of this thesis, Anderson's model is important particularly in its attempt to recuperate the continuous flow between nationalism as an 'official discourse' and nationalism as an everyday understanding of the world. However, Anderson's work remains largely historical and focused on macro dynamics. And although placed at the heart of this model, print remains understood primarily as a medium through which nationalist ideas are transmitted. This sets the ground for further research into how printed products 'reproduce' nationalism; this project hower focuses on how nationalism may equally affect the collective conceptualization and development of communication media.
2.1.2.1.2 The ethnosymbolist view 45
Developed primarily by Anthony D. Smith and John Hutchinson26 in reaction to the modernist perspective, the ethnosymbolist view saw nations and nationalisms as cultural phenomena. As Hutchinson recounted, the focus on culture was very much a minority position in the 1970s (Hutchinson, 2006). Against Gellner, Smith insisted that pre- modern ethnic and cultural ties constitute the basis upon which nations and nationalisms are subsequently formed. This would also explain, in Smith's view, the emotional attachment to nations, as well as the persistence of nationalism.
However, Smith cautioned against a primordialist view of nations27; the nation was not a natural group, but rather assumed as natural, because it grew out of a pre existing ethnocultural group. An ethnocultural group was seen as formed around an
'ethnie' - basically a group constructing itself a la longue duree, and defined "not by lines of physical descent, but by the sense of continuity, shared memory and collective destiny, i.e. by lines of cultural affinity embodied in myths, memories, symbols and values retained by a given cultural unit of population" (Smith, 1998, p. 192)28.
Importantly, ethnies may or may not develop into nations29; furthermore, not all nations pursued their own states (Guiberneau, 1999). The specific feature of nations, then, was the politicization of their (alleged) cultural space: culture was now the criteria according to which the boundaries of the nation were being explicitly drawn for the purposes of
26 Hutchinson was Smith's first PhD student at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences and used Smith's ideas formulated in Theories of Nationalism (1971) as a framework for his work (Hutchinson, 2006) Smith himself was a student of Ernest Gellner 27 Primordialist theories see the nation as a natural entity, arising organically throughout history 28 Some examples of the ethnie provided by Smith are the Jews or the Armenians These groups have an historical existence which allegedly leads to the crystallization of an intergenerational symbolic universe, that gradually starts differentiating the group from outsiders (Smith, 1998) 29For Smith, some ethnies can disappear, by integration or by genocide, such was the case of the extinction of the Hitties, the Philistines, or the Phoenicians of Lebanon Yet, I think it is important to ask ourselves to what extent we can think of these groups in terms of ethnicity (i e what currency/ meaning did 'ethnicty' have at the time)7 46 self-government. The nation was thus a cultural and a political bond, resting upon pre existing loyalties and shared symbolic universes (Smith, 1995, p. 10).
In this context, nationalism remained understood as an "ideological movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity and identity on behalf of a population deemed by some of its members to constitute an actual or potential 'nation'" (Smith, 1991, p. 73).
Smith (1998) further argued that nationalism should be understood as both an ideology and a sentiment: the ideological component was tied to the political project (and, in that sense, nationalism 'fostered' nations); the sentiment, on the other hand, stemmed from the shared ethnocultural dimension.
The distinction between ideology and sentiment introduces the question of how individuals relate to nationalism. From an analytic perspective, emphasizing the emotional identification individuals feel with their nations is an useful reminder that nationalism is not only about political debates and doctrines. However, the extent and the form of this identification remain unelucidated; not everyone feels this sense of connection to their 'nations'. Conceptualizing nations in relation to a prior ethnocultural core may be applicable from an historical, macro perspective; however, the extent to which categories such as 'ethnie' or 'culture' make sense in thinking about the past remains problematic™. While people living together do come to share certain things, these shared symbolic universes are neither innocent, nor immutable or homogeneous: "if
30 Brubaker and Cooper (2000) discuss the problems inherent in using 'identity' as a category of analysis While concepts such as 'race', 'identity' or 'culture' may make sense in everyday life (they have a persuasive force), they remain a part of a particular way of thinking (or a particular taxonomy) about human beings This taxonomy is connected to a socio-political arrangement, and, as such, "we should seek to explain the processes and mechanisms through which what has been called the 'political fiction' of the 'nation' - or of the 'ethnic group,' 'race,' or other putative 'identity' - can crystallize, at certain moments, as powerful, compelling reality But we should avoid unintentionally reproducing or reinforcing such reification by uncritically adopting categories of practice as categories of analysis" (Brubaker & Cooper, 2000, p 5) 47 there are many different pasts and cultural heritages, if there are counter-myths of origin and alternative memories, if there are rival symbolic and political projects, which one is the authentic one? Which past is distinctive, unique and truly ours?" (Ozkirimli, 2003, p.
351)31.
However, the ethnosymbolist perspective does raise a series of important questions for the study of nationalism. As John Hutchinson (2001) explained, if modernists tend to focus on nationalism as a top-down political ideology, developed primarily by elites and through institutions, ethnosymbolists recuperate culture as an important dimension of nations and nationalism. A shared culture, Hutchinson further argued, needs not be understood as homogeneous or stable; in fact, national cultures and identities are "zones of conflict", where "embedded cultural differences [...] generate rival symbolic and political projects" (2001, p. 84). There are always competing visions and projects that seek to re-organize symbols and values, and to mobilize various understanding of the nation.
This suggestion reminds us that the boundaries of 'cultures' and 'nations' are always dynamic and transformational. In particular, Hutchinson (2006) emphasized the on-going struggle between 'official' and the 'banal nationalisms'32 (or the mundane forms of nationalism espoused by individuals): where the first is top-down, prescriptive and self-conscious (the nationalism developed by various elites), the other is chaotic, unstable and heterogeneous. This 'banal nationalism' appropriates the 'official nationalism', and in this process, it adapts it to local concerns (Hutchinson, 2006, p. 298).
3lAs another scholar has noted, forgetting is never neutral: "ritual forms of erasing the present and stepping over the world of otherness is the main path towards the building of identities" (Ditchev, 1998). "Hutchinson uses Michael Billig's formulation, discussed at length in the next section. 48
Yet, in spite of Hutchinson's explanation, ethnosymbolism often ends up reifying culture; instead of approaching 'national culture' as something to be investigated in terms of the processes through which it is created - and thus contested and transformed - this model recuperates the cultural dimension by positioning it as a long-lasting element of social life. In the research design of this project, I have tried to consider nationalism in terms of the flow of ideas between macro and micro social levels, subscribing to
Hutchinson's (2001) suggestion that the balance between the heterogeneous images of the nation in everyday life and the (alleged) homogeneous 'official nationalisms' requires a critical unpacking.
Within nationalism studies, Canada has been often described as a successful example of a civic and inclusive nation; anglophone Canadian nationalism emphasizes a common culture, along with a shared sense of history, thus allowing for newcomers to be incorporated into the body of the nation (e.g. Brodie, 2002; Kymlicka, 1995). However, at the same time, anglophone Canadian nationalism has often been widely contested from a variety of actors within the state: Aboriginal communities, immigrants, French
Canadians (Breton, 1988; Esses & Gardner, 1996; Roth, 1998). In this sense, Canada is a perfect example of the nation as a 'zone of conflict'. The question of the relation between the official (state) discourses of the 'Canadian nation' and the everyday understandings, appropriations or rejections of these discourses remains central to this research project.
2.1.2.1.3 Banal nationalism
This question of the relation between 'official nationalisms' and their appropriation in everyday life has received further support through Michael Billig's (1995) work on the mundane aspects of nationalism. Billig has focused on communication media as the primary mechanisms in the reproduction and maintenance of a benign form of nationalism, namely banal nationalism. In the established, Western nations, he noted, there is a continual 'flagging', or reminding, of nationhood." (1995, p. 8). This ongoing remembrance of the nation is a reproduction strategy through which nationalism maintains itself as a 'natural order': "The reproduction of nation-states depends upon a dialectic of collective remembering and forgetting, and of imagination and unimaginative repetition" (1995, p. 10). In our everyday interactions, nationalism is constantly offered as a worldview, through a variety of linguistic and symbolic strategies such as: the presence of national flags; addressing audiences as members of the nation by using a vocabulary implying national belonging (e.g. use of'our', 'we', 'here'); taking about language, nation, religion or geography as if they are homogeneous and natural units.
Thus, nationalism becomes a background of meaning: it provides an inconspicuous narrative for interpreting the world around us. For Billig, our reliance on this banal nationalism is often unreflective: we do not consciously opt for a national frame to interpret things. Rather, we are prompted to use this frame by various cues (whether linguistic or, as we shall see next, material) that have become associated with the nation.
The reliance on nationalism to interpret the world is, to some extent, also encouraged by the long-term processes of inscribing 'national significance' into mundane objects and practices (from the food we eat to buildings, monuments etc.) (Cusack, 2005;
Edensor, 2002; Fox & Miller-Idriss, 2008; Gill, 2005; Hearn, 2007; Hiroko, 2008 ; Law,
2001; Palmer, 1998). For Tom Edensor, living our daily lives within a space (material and symbolic) framed by nationalism and institutionalized in the form of the nation-state 50 has led to the development of a "common sense that this is how things are and this is how we do things" (2002, p. 19). This common sense is not necessarily uniformly agreed upon, but rather "certain objects, concepts and symbols are shared but used and interpreted in different ways" (Edensor 2002, p. 20).
This attention to the everyday aspects of nationalism has also enabled researchers to note the various forms of individual appropriation of, or resistance to, nationalism. For example, in his model of'personal nationalism', Anthony Cohen (1996a, 1996b) proposed that individuals appropriate nationalism to make sense of their own position, life and actions. As the individual forms and performs his identity within the nation, the latter becomes "a compelling medium both for locating and depicting the selves" (Cohen,
1996a, p. 268). In this case, the problematic of nations and nationalisms is approached from a symbolic interactionist perspective, emphasizing how the individual makes sense of existing discursive resources in order perform her own identity in particular contexts.
This performance of identity relying on nationalism is a combination of unreflexive habits and conscious constructions within the frames set by the material infrastructure
(Edensor, 2002). In other words, individual performances are always located in and suggested by the wider socio-political arrangements. The unreflexive habits reproducing the nation in everyday life are seen as having a pragmatic function: they are a way of making sense of the world, coping with the existential anxieties and simplifying complexity.
One major critique brought to this interest in the mundane has to do with the disproportionate emphasis on forms of resistance at the expense of linking the everyday to the historical structures within which life takes place. Nationalism is simultaneously 51
'unreflexively consolidated' (Edensor, 2002) and resisted in our meaning-making practices. The emphasis on the malleability of the category of the nation may lead us to believe that 'nationalism', as a macro discourse, is no longer relevant33. Furthermore, not all resistance or emancipation is necessarily liberal, tolerant or peaceful (Highmore,
2002). We need to question what exactly resistance means, and to what effects on the reproduction of nationalism as a discourse. By focusing too much on recuperating individuals as agents, we loose sight of the fact that nationalism "is a fundamental medium for the very constitution of power" (Hearn, 2006, p. 227) and that this implies particular ethical positions and hierarchies.
Neither Billig's model, nor the subsequent work inspired by it focuses primarily on communication media. As already mentioned, Billig looks at media as a central site where the reproduction of banal nationalism takes place, primarily through linguistic cues and professional practices34. In line with the traditional approach in nationalism studies, mass media are understood as macro institutions, enrolled in the reproduction of nationalism. It is not clear however whether media are indeed a homogeneous body and whether they reproduce only one form of nationalism (e.g. 'official nationalism').
In the context of this research project, 'banal nationalism' is an important theoretical model in the analysis of the data, informing an interest in the complex balance between our understanding of the world and the material structure (in)forming it. Macro- approaches in nationalism studies recommend that top-down forms of nationalism seek to unite and inscribe the 'imagined community' in all aspects of the social and material life;
33 As Smith notes in his review of the field of nationalism studies, such suggestions resonate with post modernist or post-national accounts (e.g. Bhabha, 1990, 1994; Cook, 2004; Habermas, 1998/2001; Habermas & Arnason, 2000; McNeill, 1986). 34 For example, the selection of the angle or of the frame for the story. 52 however, the research on the mundane assimilation of these forms of nationalism shows that this process is never homogeneous or complete (Harootunian, 2004). This thesis seeks to incorporate this tension, taking note of John E. Fox and Cynthia Miller-Idriss' warning: "the general ways in which nationhood can resonate do not account for the specific ways in which nationhood actually does resonate - to the extent it does so at all"
(2008, p. 537).
2.1.2.2 Nationalism and Globalization
Anthony D. Smith has recently argued that "perhaps the single most potent development in the field has been the application of the study of'globalization' to the field of nation- states, nations, and nationalism" (2008, p. 326). He further noted that this problematic has gradually shifted from a simplistic dichotomy (nationalism versus globalization), to more nuanced forms of co-existence and overlap between national and global forces and discourses (e.g. Appadurai, 1996; Beck, 2000; Featherstone, 1995; Giddens, 1990; Held et al., 1999; Rosenau, 1997; Scholte, 2005; Tomlinson, 1999).
Globalization however is not an easily defined concept either; in particular, the question of what comes to be labelled as (and thought as a dynamic associated with) globalization is often obscured. Reviewing the different approaches dealing with the relation between the national and the global dimensions, Ozkirimli (2005) noted that researchers' views of globalization brings along particular takes on nations and nationalisms. From this perspective, he identified four main positions: 53
• Globalization seen as a process of increased interdependence, creating a 'global
village' where the boundaries and sovereignty of nation-states, as well as the
significance of nationalism are gradually eroded35.
• Globalization understood as the Americanization/ Westernization of the world. In
this scenario, nationalism is often seen as a form of local resistance to such
homogenizing processes.
• Globalization described as a dimension of social life in general; the emphasis is
placed on how electronic media create an interconnected world, as well as a
disembodied understanding of time and space36. From this perspective,
nationalism appears as weakened in some instances (e.g. under the influence of
an increased awareness of a shared simultaneity) and heightened in others (e.g. as
a mechanism of coping with the anxieties of modernity).
• Globalization seen as an interplay between local and global forces and processes.
The emphasis here is on the complementarity of global and national forces37.
But are our contemporary social dynamics indicative of a radical social transformation
(of the type of the shift from feudalism to modernity)? Or is the turbulence we are experiencing merely a continuation of the existing social structure38? Approaching globalization as a name for a set of 'real' social dynamics tends to focus our attention on the question of definitions (what globalization is). For Hay and Rosamond (2002),
"American editorialist Thomas Friedman is one of the most well-known proponents of this view 36 Scholars such as Anthony Giddens or David Held discuss the role of time/space in modern social imaginanes 37 Also known as the 'glocalization' thesis, these arguments have been advanced by a number of scholars such as James Rosenau, Ronald Robertson, Ulrich Beck etc 38 Incidentally, this is a central question asked within the context of the alleged 'Information Revolution' are we indeed living in the midsts of a transformation of the social structure, led by the nexus technology- capitalism'' See for example the critique that Nicholas Garnham (2000) and Frank Webster (2000) have brought to Manuel Castells' 'network society' (Castells, 2000, 2004) 54 globalization should be examined in terms of the claims it comes to legitimize; for, "it is the ideas that actors hold about the context in which they find themselves, rather than the context itself, which informs the way in which the actors behave" (Hay & Rosamond,
2002, p. 148).
From a discursive perspective, the process of representing the 'reality-out-there' is in fact constitutive of it (Hall, 1997a). As Bigo and Walker (2007) suggest, discussions of globalization often hide away the existence of the inter-national system; in this sense, nationalism is not only drawing boundaries around the 'nation', but it is also specifying what we can expect to find outside of it. Approaching globalization as a discourse is able to shift our attention attention from trying to identify, name and categorize social practices, to asking what references to globalization do in terms of contesting and legitimizing identities and actions (e.g. Hay & Rosamond, 2002; Rosamond, 1999)TO. As
Walker (2010) argues, we need to start thinking of what globalization discourses are able to tell us about contemporary contestations, tensions and anxieties.
Yet, nationalism scholars have often failed to interrogate the discursive dimension of globalization, choosing to focus instead on providing 'proof that nations and nationalisms are still relevant. For historian Eric Hobsbawm, the social change associated with globalization does not constitute a radical break with the past, even if he sees it as affecting the role of nationalism in society: "the historical function of creating a nation as a nation-state is no longer the basis of nationalism [...] But today, the xenophobic element in nationalism is increasingly important" (2010, p. 142). Benedict Anderson (1992, 2001)
39 For instance, Rosamond argues that references to globalization create a simplistic notion of external constraints on policy, economic, political or cultural choices. At the core of these references lies the idea that there are 'no alternatives' (Rosamond, 1999). 55 has echoed this view in his argument that immigration affects nationalism's political and cultural relevance. In his view, immigration creates 'core constituencies' outside the territory associated with the nation; yet, these constituencies, while away from their
'homeland', are still living within national structures. As such, long-distance nationalisms and the official nationalisms of both the country of origin and the country of residence co-exist, mutually shaping each other. This leads to an array of new problems and concerns associated with the problematic of nations and nationalism, from the emergence of new forms of hybridized identities (see Bhabha, 1990, 1994) to the radicalization of immigrant/ host nationalist discourses.
For ethnosymbolists, the erosion thesis is equally problematic because it does not take into account the deep ethno-cultural roots of nations (Smith, 1990, 2007). From this perspective, the erosion of state sovereignty as an alleged consequence of globalization should not be equated with the erosion of nationalism40. For Smith (1990), the right way of approaching the national/ global pair is by acknowledging their complementarity.
Importantly, communication media are seen as playing an important role in this context: that of the delivering "suitably packaged imagery and symbolism" for the globalized world (Smith, 1990, p. 174). Yet, such media may equally deliver national images and symbols, which raises important questions about the ways in which media come to be associated with nation-building or globalization projects. As Smith rightfully points out, the question is to what extent the reliance on the trope of the 'global culture' comes to legitimize the popularization of a techno-capitalist project pushing for "a technological
40 Importantly, this view rests on the assumption that state sovereignty was a fait accompli This approach, I would argue, misses the tension between the claims to sovereignty put forward by nationalism, and the reality of the complex practices through which this sovereignty was constructed or otherwise challenged 56 base made up of many overlapping systems of communications bound by a common quantitative and technical discourse" (Smith, 1990, p. 177)4i.
Another notable take comes from the work of sociologist Craig Calhoun, who has argued that globalization does not replace nations and nationalism (2006, 2008). Calhoun notes that transnationalist ties and hybridized identities are by no means new; such social relations have always been a part of modern societies (Calhoun, 1999, pp. 224-5). What is significant about such identities today is the power that they hold over people's imagination: we imagine ourselves through the lens of national identity, which makes both hybridization and multiculturalism problematic, but by no means inexistent. For
Calhoun, the problem is not whether globalization replaces nationalism; but to what extent there is a split between "the world of direct interpersonal relationships and the mode of organization and integration of large-scale social systems" (1991, p. 96; also
Calhoun, 2008)42.
From this perspective, the rhetoric of the ICTs-driven globalization, resulting in the demise of nations, nation-states and nationalism, is particularly problematic; as argued in the previous chapter, this research project is constructed precisely against this rhetoric. The discussions within the field of nationalism studies outlined here constitute an intellectual origin for this thesis, primarily in their emphasis that globalization and nationalism have to be interrogated in terms of the identity claims and the legitimation
41 This critique has equally been developed in the context of discourses around ICTs (Graham, 1998; Miller, 2004; Sassen, 1999) (see previous chapter). Scholars have pointed out that the 'Information Age' or the 'network society' should be deconstructed as projects reflecting the agendas of particular groups (technical elites, capitalist elites) and inspired by particular discourses (neo-liberalism). 42 Calhoun proposes the development of cosmopolitan solidarities through participation in the public sphere; in essence, Calhoun's is a civic model where, ethnic ties notwithstanding, an inclusive constitutional regime based on human rights (and not cultural specificity) would become the framework within which cosmopolitan solidarities and identities could be formed (Calhoun, 1999, 2008). 57 vocabularies that they present us with. Importantly however, these discussions do not focus primarily on communication media, in spite of their rhetorical centrality within discourses of globalization. In particular, Smith's remark that media are simultaneously a platform for elites pushing for globalization and for national cultures suggests that media themselves are a site of struggle over power. In this context, interrogating how a medium like the internet is imagined may be helpful in understanding how discourses and practices associated with both globalization and nationalism co-exist.
2.2 Nationalism in the field of communication studies
The second part of this chapter looks at how nationalism as a problematic has been approached within the field of communication studies. The treatment of the concept of
'nation' in this field has shifted from an essentialist understanding, to a definition emphasizing the socially constructed nature of the concept, and the contingent and heterogeneous nature of the groups to which it may apply43. At the same time, the integration of the critique of'ideology' into the discussion of communication media has also provided a theoretical model for considering and perhaps resisting the reproduction of nationalism through mass media. However, nationalism has never been central to the field; nor has it been part of the theoretical reflection on communication media.
The second part of this chapter surveys several theoretical approaches to mediated communication. These models have either uncritically positioned media as nation- building tools, or ignored the processes through which media were 'nationalized' (i.e.
43 This shift did not take place solely in the field of communication and it was not concerned only the concept of the nation, but also to concepts such as 'race', 'ethnicity' or 'gender' (e.g. Barkan, 2003; Calhoun, 1999). 58 associated with the nation). Furthermore, the centrality of these media to contemporary social processes was often described in terms of alleged nationalizing or globalizing effects, as if these effects stemmed from the characteristics of media themselves. The question of how a medium became understood as a nation-building tool remains widely untackled; instead, media are a priori assumed as forming 'national communication systems'(Carey, 1998).
2.2.1 Message transmission models
Although the roots of the communication studies go back to the study of rhetoric (Heath
& Bryant, 2000; Purcell, 1992), the field emerged as an institutionalized discipline in the
United States from the 1950s on44. This emergence was marked by the existing military interest in propaganda and the rise of functionalism, which steered the research agenda in the direction of media functions and effects (e.g. Attallah, 1991, Hardt, 1989; Pooley &
Park, 2008). Mediated communication was approached as the transmission of messages via particular channels, with particular effects on audiences (e g. Rogers & Valente,
1993; Schramm, 1997)45. In this early model, communication media were largely understood as unproblematic nation-building tools. However, this model remains important here as an historic context within which communication media became an object of research within communication studies.
44 Armand Mattelart proposes a different take on this historical development He incorporates all circuits of exchange and circulation (of people, goods and ideas) under the concept of communication, arguing that the communication problematic was (ln)formed by the emergence of a "national mercantile space" (1996, p xiv) 45 Bretton and Proulx (2002) argue that this context has led to the marginal ization of the Chicago school's work on communication as symbolic interaction (also Czitrom, 1982, Hardt, 1989) Later on, James Carey will recuperate this perspective in the study of mediated communication 59
2.2.1.1 Cybernetic roots
The roots of the message transmission models are to be found in the neighbouring disciplines of cybernetics and information theory. Cybernetics was concerned with ensuring (social) control via communication (Rheingold, 2000b)46. Consequently, communication was defined as the transmission of information between a system (e.g. a missile) and its environment, with the purpose of steering the system towards a desired state. Information theory continued this line of thought, focusing on communication as a linear and unidirectional process of transmitting a signal (or a message) from a sender to a receiver, via a medium47. Defined as "all of the procedures by which one mind may affect another" (Shannon & Weaver quoted in Heath & Bryant, 2000, p. 63), communication was evaluated in terms of its effects on the receiver48.
Although this model never engaged directly with nations and nationalism, it did inspire Karl Deutsch's cybernetic model of nations discussed in the first part of this chapter. Cybernetics was motivated by an interest in 'steering' the social body, by preserving social 'equilibrium'. Yet, power dimensions of that equilibrium were hardly a matter of reflection. The lack of critical engagement with questions of power made it
46 Cybernetics emerged in the context of military research in the United States during the Second World War The word itself was coined by Norbert Wiener from the Greek root 'to steer' The goal of cybernetics was to engineer a technological system capable of restoring its equilibrium after being disturbed by external influences This restorative capacity was defined as the system's ability to incorporate feedback from the environment and thus to preserve itself by adapting to its environment The focus was on the interaction (conceived of as communication) between a system and its environment However, in his later work, Wiener proposed that cybernetics could also be of use to understanding social systems "The model was published by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver (1949) in The Mathematical Theoiy of Communication The authors emphasized that this is an engineering model that cannot be extended to social sciences precisely because, on the one hand, it brackets the symbolic content of the message, and on the other, it says nothing about meaning-making The linearity of the model remains disputed, since subsequent cybernetics (and information) theories also included a feedback loop (Lafontaine, 2007, Rogers and Valente, 1993) Regardless of these theoretical nuances, communication remains understood as a transmission/ exchange of information 48 If the receiver did not comply to the message, the model assumed that communication had failed 60 easy for communication researchers to think of society as a space of efficient transmission of information (Wiener, 1965).
The cybernetic tradition encouraged a view of communication media as channels for the reproduction of social order, where the 'social' was assumed to be congruent with the 'nation'. The understanding of communication media rooted in this tradition remains important here primarily because it informs an understanding of the internet as a tool for the transmission of information (or of the national/ global culture) over space and time.
This facilitates a view of ICTs as both enablers of new forms of nationalism, and as mechanisms eroding the sovereignty of national spaces.
2.2.1.2 Media functions and media effects
The cybernetic model was widely embraced by scholars in the emerging field of communication studies in the United States, becoming a normative paradigm (Corner &
Hawthorn, 1990; Curran, 1990; Czitrom, 1982; Delia, 1987; Fiske, 1990; Heath &
Bryant, 2000; Pooley, 2008; Rogers & Valente, 1993)49. The model also brought with it a specific vocabulary (e.g. sender, receiver, message, channel, noise) through which communication was conceptualized as a message-transmission process with specific social functions and effects.
Thus, society was approached as a bounded system in which mass media fulfilled certain social roles, ultimately aimed at maintaining social order (Attallah, 1991;
Burrowes, 1996; Hardt, 1989). The functionalist approach focused on creating typologies of the roles media play in the reproduction of society (Lasswell, 1948; Wright, 1959).
49 Some of the scholars working on adapting the model to communication studies were: Gerbner (1956), Lasswell (1948), Westley & MacLean (1967), Osgood (1954), Schramm (1954), Newcomb (1953). 61
Media were thus seen as having several functions: surveillance of the social environment
(providing shared information needed for action), correlation (providing shared interpretations of this information), public opinion formation, agenda-setting, transmission of culture and entertainment (Breton & Proulx, 2002; Heath & Bryant,
2000; Littlejohn, 2002; McQuail, 1987)50.
The functionalist perspective found a fertile terrain in the context of media and development studies; for instance, Wilbur Schramm's (1964) work in this area rested on the underlying assumption that mass media are central to national development. Schramm however never questioned the idea of what 'national development' represents, who undertakes it, for what purpose and whom gets excluded as a result. Media were understood as institutions able to inform, to educate and to mobilize national audiences
(Schramm, 1964, p. 126). Social change and nation-building were seen as interchangeable: a country could become economically viable (postulated by Schramm as the 'ultimate goal') if it had a strong national media system.
Another research problematic informed by the message-transmission model was that of media effects. This problematic emerged in the 1930s, under the influence of both war propaganda studies and commercial interests in measuring the effects of media content on audiences. By the 1940s - 1950s, Paul Lazarsfeld and his colleagues had established the thesis of minimal effects (Czitrom, 1982; Lubken, 2008; Pooley, 2008)51.
50 For instance, although Denis McQuail (1987) questions this typology as somewhat arbitrary, his own proposed model assumes media have to serve national purposes, such as: the reproduction of national identity, the dissemination of national values and consciousness, the diffusion of language and culture, the reproduction of the national memories, and the production of culture (McQuail, 1987, p. 344). S| For a critique of this traditional historiography, see Curran (1990); Park and Pooley (2008). Lubken (2008) argues that in fact the idea of strong media effects (known as the hypodermic needle/ magic bullet theory) had never been an acknowledged or prevailing paradigm; instead, it served as a rhetorical device through which those advocating strong effects were deemed as lacking expertise in the field of communication. 62
Also known as the 'two-steps flow' (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955), this thesis proposed that mass mediated content was filtered through local opinion leaders, who interpreted that content for their groups. Nevertheless, mass media remained understood as channels through which messages produced effects on audiences52.
Oblivious to their assumptions about national spaces and cultures, this tradition ended up reinforcing the very discourse of nationalism. Like other social science disciplines of the time, it was permeated by methodological nationalism53; that is, media were understood from the perspective of nationalist elites, as channels for the transmission of an unproblematic 'national culture' (also Wiley, 2004). The message transmission scholars popularized a view of communication media "as the basic tool for mobilization of the American people to volunteer, conserve, and in other ways aid in concentrating the nation's resources on winning the war" (Chaffee & Rogers, 1997, p.
135).
2.2.2 Critical models of communication
In reaction to the message-transmission model, critical perspectives such as the Frankfurt
School and the British Cultural Studies shifted the research agenda from media functions and effects to a concern with ideology, power and social structures (Attallah, 1991;
Breton & Proulx, 2002; Curran, 1990, 2006; Hardt, 1989; Kellner, 1993, 1995;
,2 In time, the message transmission model became increasingly complexified (Fiske, 1990; Heath & Bryant, 2000): Westley & MacLean (1957) included the editorial process as a step in the linear transmission process; Newcomb (1953) problematized the sender and receiver as co-orienting toward each other, as well as toward the object of communication; Gerbner (1956) integrated the transmission model with the stimulus-response theory; Blumer & Katz's (1974) 'uses and gratifications' theory shifted the focus from what media do to people, to why people use particular media. '3This critique has been discussed earlier in this chapter; it refers to the unexamined assumption that society and the nation-state are congruent (Beck, 2007; Billig, 1995; Bourdieu, 1990; Chernillo, 2006, 2007; Mattlerat and Mattlerat, 1992, pp. 9-12; Norman, 2006; Shapiro, 2004; Wimmer and Schiller, 2002). 63
Nordenstreng, 1977; Slack & Allor, 1983)54. Furthermore, with the British Cultural
Studies group, language became understood as constitutive of the social world; the focus in studying communication media thus changed from the transmission of messages to sense-making practices and meanings (Heath & Bryant, 2000; Chandler, 1994; Fiske,
1991; Krippendorff, 1994)55.
Interested primarily in the Marxist question of ideology, these critical models did not focus exclusively on communication media. Their interdisciplinary position brought along considerations about aesthetics, culture, identity, power and agency. The scholar was no longer a scientist seeking predictive models, but an "organic intellectual"56, criticizing the lines of domination in society and rejecting essentializing ideologies.
Critical scholars have usually denounced nationalism, especially in its violent forms. Yet, in spite of this, the problematic of nations and nationalisms has remained marginal to the critical models discussed next. In part, this has to do with their Marxist orientation, which has traditionally understood nationalism as a derivative of capitalism
(i.e. as a consequence of capitalist economic relations). While many of the insights opened by these critical models have also influenced the field of nationalism studies, it is important to emphasize that nationalism was not seen as an important factor in the workings of communication media. 54 The message transmission paradigm was not without alternatives or critics in the United States Alternatives were offered by the symbolic interactionist perspective (Czitrom, 1982, Delia, 1987, Hall, 1980a), by the tradition of film analysis, where scholars drew from psychoanalysis and cultural anthropology, and by the work of C Wright Mills questioning the reliance on quantitative - and particularly statistical -methods (Czitrom, 1982) " This shift in emphasis is linked to a wider epistemological transformation permeating social sciences This transformation includes insights from Wittgenstein's philosophical approach to language games, van Humboldt's take on language, Saussure's work on the arbitrary nature of the sign and the structured nature of the language, Barthes' semiotic method of examining the meaning of texts in relation to ideologies (mythologies), Sapir and Wholfs work on languages as filters of reality ,6The formulation belongs to Antonio Gramsci and was adopted by Stuart Hall in describing the work of the Birmingham Centre 64
On the other hand, these models did open up the space for questioning the assumption of media as nation-building tools. In this respect, the role of media in the
(re)production of culture was approached from the perspective of power-related dynamics; the aim was no longer that of ensuring 'social equilibrium' (as in the case of the message-transmission model), but that of revealing the politics of a given social order. The nation, as well as the ideas of national culture or national interest, were regarded as loci of social struggle; similarly, media content became a site of the struggle over the representation of the 'nation'. Thus, culture and communication became intertwined, in a way that paradoxically rehearsed Deutsch's model of the cybernetic nation: "all culture, to become a social artifact, and thus properly 'culture', is both mediator and mediated by communication, and is thus communicational by nature"
(Kellner, 1995a, p. 169). Importantly, culture was no longer taken for granted as an
'existing reality', but rather conceptualized as a category of analysis (Brubaker & Cooper,
2000); the emphasis was now placed on how cultures were articulated, by whom and for what purposes.
2.2.2.1 Media as cultural industries
The first Frankfurt School generation57 provided the most influential Marxist critique of the massification of society (Breton & Proulx, 2002). In the Marxist model, economic relations were seen as determining social order; the reproduction of the oppressive capitalist relations was understood as enabled by ideologies. The latter allegedly created a
57 The Frankfurt School included the group of intellectuals associated with the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, established in early 1920s. From the 1930s, the institute was led by Max Horkheimer, and Theodor Adorno was his main associate. Other first generation scholars included Marcuse, Pollock, Kirchheimer, Fromm, Neumann, Lowenthal, Benjamin, Reich (McLaughlin, 1999; Morris, 2001). 65
'false consciousness' in people, duping them into accepting the system of economic domination. In advanced capitalism, argued the Frankfurt School, ideology was supported and transmitted through a process of massification; mass media - or the culture industries58 - were part of this process, spreading cultural conformism and erasing individual autonomy, creativity and critical thinking (Adorno, 1967/ 1975; Attallah,
1991; Breton and Proulx, 20002; Connor, 2000; Delanty, 2000; Horkheimer & Adorno,
2002).
In this model, media remained approached in terms of their capacity to transmit a message to a mass audience; however, 'false consciousness' was not enabled merely by the content of a newspaper article or of a radio show. As institutions, mass media were seen as transforming culture into a commodity to be consumed by mass audiences, thus returning a profit. This commodification transformed culture into a form of "public relations, the manufacturing of'good will' per se .. [bringing about] a general uncritical consensus" (Adorno, 1975, p. 13). To the extent that "the whole world is passed through the filter of the culture industry" (Horkheimer & Adorno, 2002, p. 99), media were seen as reproducing the classificatory practices of capitalism, effectively turning the critical subject into an obedient consumer (Attallah, 1991)59.
,8 Adorno and Horkheimer initially used the term 'mass culture', but opted for 'culture industry' to emphasize the top-down, planned and manufactured nature of this type of culture Furthermore, the term 'industry' is meant to express the standardization and uniformization of culture itself (Adorno, 1975) 1,9 Horkheimer and Adorno adopted the concept of'instrumental rationality' (or the logic of capitalism) from Max Weber Instrumental rationality was the type of reasoning which evaluated everything in order to gain control over and extract profit from it Adorno's 'instrumental reason' was understood as the transformation of the Enlightenment's critical reason (opposed to dogmatism and based on the verifiable knowledge about natural world) into a type of thinking servient to capitalism (l e interested in profit-making) Thus, thinking turned instrumental it was an instrument of gaining control over nature for profit-making goals (hence, 'instrumental rationality') Technological progress was seen as leading to the complete lnstrumentalization of reason, hiding away the profit-making goal under the promise of progress and welfare for all (see Habermas, 1968/1971, 196871971b) 66
Culture industries thus reproduced capitalism by transforming the capitalist logic into a normative way of thinking, extending beyond economic relations; instrumental rationality (see the footnote above) becomes all-encompassing. In a way, the ideological function of culture industries seemed to stem from their institutional form: media were profit-making activities, and as such they reproduced a capitalist understanding of the world. Furthermore, through them, the grip of capitalist ideology was seen as becoming all-encompassing, thus rendering critical thinking impossible (Jay, 1994).
Although nationalism was not addressed in this model of mediated communication, the particular angle through which Adorno and Horkheimer understood mass media was similar to Gellner's view of media as a signifier of the nation. In this sense, it was not only the content of media that allegedly 'built' the nation, but the very nature of the institutionalization of media equally facilitated this process (Adorno, 1975).
In the same way, this project questions precisely the nation-building role of media by looking at how the internet becomes understood as an object of discourse in various
social spheres in Canada. Borrowing from the epistemological position offered by the
Frankfurt School, this project espouses a political commitment to scepticism and to the deconstruction of all forms of social authoritarianism (Huyssen, 1975).
However, it is also important to note that the model of culture industries remained understood within the boundaries of the nation-state (Jay, 1990; Kozlarek, 2006).
Although the members of the Frankfurt School were virulently opposed to anti-Semitism,
ethnic prejudice and nationalism (particularly in the context of Nazi Germany), the latter remained interpreted as a by-product of capitalism60. As an ideology, nationalism could
60In line with the Marxist view of nationalism as secondary to class conflict Nationalism was seen as an ideological byproduct of capitalism (a form of bourgeois ideology) meant to divert attention from the 67 be countered through critical thinking (Morris, 2001); as a cultural project, the nation was always a tentative, yet normative project (Kozlarek, 1996, p. 46). Importantly, the
Frankfurt School directed their critique at the state, understood as an authoritarian and top-down instrument of capitalism. Thus, while the culture industry model opened the door to critical approaches to nations and nationalism in relation to communication media
(particularly in terms of questioning the power dimensions behind the project of the nation), this opening was not pursued by this particular school of thought.
2.2.2.2 Media as the public sphere
Jiirgen Habermas has continued the critique of ideology proposed by the first generation of the Frankfurt School. However, unlike Adorno and Horkheimer, Habermas saw hope for critical thinking: his project was thus aimed at recuperating the possibility of resistance to the totalizing grasp of instrumental rationality61. Habermas (1962/1991) proposed that critical thinking, as well as democracy, were still possible to the extent that public spaces (the public sphere), where citizens could reach common decisions through a rational dialogue, remained independent from the state and the economy. From the 19th century on, Habermas argued, the bourgeois public sphere had been colonized by a capitalist logic. Most importantly, mass media organized as a private business (the
system of domination and to fragment labour solidarity, thus undermining the possibility of revolution. Marx also thought that the internationalizing pressures of capitalism will eventually render nationalism obsolete. However, he also supported national movements when he felt they advance the cause of communism (Munch, 1986; Szporluk, 1988). For an interesting case study of the contingent articulations between Marxism and national identity discourses in the end of 19th century France, see Stuart (2006). 61 In fairness, even within the first generation of the Frankfurt School, this possibility for resistance was recognized. Walter Benjamin shared Adorno and Horkheimer's idea of mass reproduction as spreading standardization and thus limiting critical thinking; but in his work on film, he also discussed its emancipatory potential (Attallah, 1991; Breton & Proulx, 2002; Connor, 2000; Hohendahl, 1985; Huyssen, 1975;Kellnern/a, 1995a, 1995b; Waldman, 1977). 68
'culture industry'), were the main mechanisms of this colonization, as they represented and promoted instrumental rationality. Yet, Habermas did not believe that instrumental rationality was all encompassing (Hohendahl, 1985); thus, he outlined the conditions under which mass media could become a true public sphere: self-regulation of media institutions, independence from other spheres (i.e. state and economy), and opportunities for citizens to express and debate their own opinions (Habermas, 2006).
Importantly, in this model, both the public sphere and mass media were understood as part of the nation-state (see Chernilo, 2007; Fine, 1996; Fraser, 2007). As his later work indicates (Habermas & Arnason, 2001; Habermas, 1995, 1996,
1998/2001), Habermas conceived of the nation-state as the form of organization within which a democratic polis could be achieved. This association between democracy and nation-states is particularly interesting in terms of its effects on the possibility to imagine political alternatives to the national model; for, as explained in earlier, the promise of a free and equal polis was always part of nationalism.
For Habermas, the nation, understood in cultural (rather than ethnic) terms, remained the necessary ingredient for ensuring the social mobilization required for democracies to function (Habermas, 1996, p. 128). In his work The Post-National
Constellation (1998/2001), Habermas sketched a solution for the future of the nation- state as a site of democracy and of resistance to instrumental rationality. The solution was a cosmopolitan order, based on the civic version of the nation-state, within which independent public spheres could emerge. The post-national society was one in which global capitalist forces were pushed into "see[ing] themselves as members of the international community, who are compelled to cooperate with one another, and hence to 69 take one another's interests into account" (Habermas, 1998/2001, p. 55). At the same time, as the political stage would allegedly become open to all citizens, new forms of loyalty and mobilization would emerge, rooted in the legal frameworks of those states and in the universal civic rights. In this way, Habermas hoped to reconcile the local (the particular) as expressed in the national legal frameworks with an universal
(cosmopolitan?) perspective, rooted in human rights. For him, these forms of loyalty were more neutral than the ones fostered by the 'ethnic' nation, eventually leading to the formation of a cosmopolitan solidarity (Habermas, 1998/ 2001, p. 57).
Although Habermas did not focus on mass media in this context, they remain understood as crucial communication channels through which a civic and cosmopolitan loyalty could be fostered. Perhaps ironically, Habermas echoed the view of 1848
Romantic nationalists when he proposed that the creation of this loyalty has to be an elite driven project, via cultural institutions (media included). The post-national society remained however premised on the idea of an emotional identification with "the spectrum
of competing interpretations of constitutional principles from within which the thick
context of the history of one's own nation" (Habermas & Arnason, 2000, p. 4, my
emphasis). This vision of a cosmopolitan order does not truly part with the model of the
nation as the 'natural' form of social organization; instead, it folds back into the thorny
question of whether civic nations are (or can be) better than - or in fact possible without
also engineering - 'ethnic' ones (see for instance Flyvbjerg's argument that nationalism plays a crucial role in the dynamics around the creation of a constitution (1998, p. 217))62.
62In fact, Habermas himself notes that the roots of civic nations are in the pre-existing cultural nation, shaped by a 'particular history', where "constitutional principles are, without any harm to their universalist meaning, interpreted from the perspective of this political culture, which provides at the same time the base for a constitutional patriotism" (Habermas, 1995, p. 849). 70
As John Milfull notes, "behind his unique verbal smokescreen, Habermas had embarked on a careful progression, or better, regression from critical theorist to 'constitutional patriot', affirming the state and the constitution while chatting about their ongoing improvement" (2007, p. 109).
Habermas' view of media as a potential form of the public sphere, as well as his discussion of the post-national model are important here not only because they ultimately fall back into the view of media as sites of nation-building. More importantly, Habermas' argument prefigures the dominant trope within the 'information society' discourse discussed in the previous chapter; this discourse portrays the transmission of information as a sufficient condition for the realization of a peaceful, democratic and global world.
This discussion remains, in fact, connected to Habermas' more comprehensive argument on the various forms of rationality (Attallah, 1991; Flybjerg, 1998; Fusfield, 1997;
Hohendahl, 1985; Morris, 2001). To summarize, Habermas has argued that instrumental rationality could be countered by communicative rationality; the latter was a form of rationality innate to any act of communication and stemming from the participants' orientation towards each other during the interaction, in order to achieve rational consensus (Habermas, 1968/1971, 1974; also Attallah, 1991; Forbath, 1998; Fusfield,
1997; Hohendahl, 1985; Huspek, 1997; McCarthy, 1976; Morris, 2001).
To the extent that public spheres were formed - and the internet has often been promoted as such a sphere - communicative rationality could counter capitalist ideology, but also the distortions of ethnic nationalism (and particularly its take on difference as threatening). From this perspective, Habermas was able to assume that once people re engage in a rational debate, they would critically engage with nationalism, stripping it of 71 its ethnic elements while retaining a loyalty to its civic forms (e.g. Habermas, 1998,
1991, 1992, 1994).
This assumption of reason as the antidote for the virulent and violent forms of nationalism remains important; as we shall see in the analysis chapters, this assumption has made its way into everyday understandings of the capacity of the internet to transmit information and thus 'fix' problems such as nationalism or racism. Furthermore, I would argue that Habermas' work has, perhaps in a paradoxical way, shifted the focus from the thorny problematic of media as culture industries to media as public spheres; approaching media as enablers of democracy leaves little room for the type of question that this research project is asking: how is a new medium imagined, what roles do pre-existing discourses play into this picture, and to what consequences.
2.2.2.3 Media as mechanisms of encoding/ decoding meaning
The Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies63 continued the discussion of the centrality of media to ideological reproduction, reconceptualizing its main concepts -
'ideology' and 'class'. Although various scholars associated with the Birmingham Centre
(such as Stuart Hall and Paul Gilory) have directly engaged with the problematic of nationalism, this engagement was not part of the conceptualization of mass media.
Nevertheless, Stuart Hall's work on 'ideology' and his theoretical model of the relation between media, audiences and meaning-making offer an important analytic toolbox for approaching the research question proposed here. In particular, Hall's reframing of the
63 Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams and E.P.Thompson are considered to be the founding generation of the Birmingham group. The next generation was marked by Stuart Hall's leadership and included scholars like David Morley, Charlotte Brunsden, Dorothy Hobson, Angela McRobbie, Paul Gilroy, Dick Hebdige, Paul Willis. 72 transmission of content as a process of meaning-making opens up the possibility to inquire into the mechanisms through which both media and audiences make sense of social reality, while simultaneously constructing it.
The Centre's focus however was not on mass media, but on ideology as a cultural phenomenon that is not determined solely by the economic organization (During, 2005;
Hall, 1980, 1999, 2007; Lutter & Reisenleitner, 2002; Rojek, 2003, 2007; Sparks, 1989).
Hall argued that culture was not only the result of economic relations, but also of patterns of communication (Hall, 1980, p. 59; also Hall, 2007). Borrowing from Levi-Strauss' semiotic model, Hall further explained that these sustained patterns of communications form a structured and shared system of meanings "in thought and language" (Hall, 1980, p. 65). The realm of culture however was not to be understood as homogeneous; in fact, various ideological positions co-existed in this realm, which corresponded to the existing social structures and which constrained, to some extent, people's meaning-making processes (Hall, 1980, 1999).
Thus, the reproduction of capitalist ideology via mass media was seen as a process of meaning-making drawing from the wider and shared cultural universe, but open (at least to some extent) to interpretation. Ideological reproduction was reframed as a process of production and consumption of meaning (and thus of culture) (Hall, 1973/
1980). Importantly, each of the stages of this process was something to be investigated in terms of the 'ideological effects' on people, and not taken for granted. Roughly, this model proposed that meaning was encoded into content in the production stage, and decoded during its consumption by audiences. The encoding/ decoding of meaning relied on the existing cultural codes (or sets of conventions for organizing signs in relation to 73 each other), but it was not entirely determined by them as ultimately meaning had to be interpreted. Importantly however, the ideological effect was understood as stemming from the particular cultural codes used in the encoding/ decoding process, since such codes were always related to specific configurations of power relations which they sought to legitimize.
As profit-making activities and as institutions central to political organization, media were understood as reproducing (but not creating) prevailing ideologies, translating them into the language of 'ordinary conversations' by proposing a 'preferred reading' of the world (or the use of specific cultural codes in 'reading' the world) and by attempting to build consensus around this reading (Hall et al., 1978, p. 62). In turn, audiences were seen as relatively free in their interpretation of media content; that freedom however was dependent on the reader's position in the social structure (Hall et al., 1978; Morley, 1980). However, as Morley's (1980) subsequent empirical work on audience reception showed, just what influences this process of interpretation was widely unknown, since belonging to a particular class did not automatically result in adopting the same reading.
This model opened up the question of how ideologies play a role in the process of meaning-making; furthermore, it suggested that ideologies themselves are heterogeneous fields of struggle between different groups attempting to 'fix' a particular meaning (Hall,
1985). The complex mechanisms through which individuals were co-opted into an ideological construction of reality remained however widely unexplained64. The most
64 Later on, Hall revisited the encoding/decoding model, identifying four major areas in need of further research: the dynamics of the ideological reading/meaning inscribed in the text; the implied suggestion of a 'world-out-there' which is then encoded/ decoded; the relation between hegemonic reproduction and the encoding process; and the relation between discourse, material arrangements and history (Pillai, 1992; 74 important contribution of this model was the proposal that ideological reproduction was not a simple, causal process, yet still a crucial dimension of our making sense of the world (also Curran, 1990, 2006; Connor, 2000; Hall, 1980a; Hall et al., 1980).
In relation to its possible contribution to the incorporation of nationalism as a problematic in the theoretical reflection on communication media, it is important to mention that this model continued the emphasis on capitalism as the ideology of interest.
As Paul Gilroy (1987, 1993) remarked, cultural studies became marked by a "quiet cultural nationalism" (Gilroy, 1993, p. 4); the absence of an engagement with nationalism and racism from the agenda of the Centre was highly problematic, particularly since ethnicity, race, nationality and culture could not be easily divorced from meaning-making practices (see also During, 2005; Gilroy, 1987, 1993; Rojek, 2003; Steedman, 1999)65.
This absence is even more puzzling since Hall himself has remarked elsewhere that ethnic and national identification still hold an important mobilization power and are thus crucial sites in the ideological struggle over meaning and social arrangements (Hall,
1990, 1996b, 1997b, 1999c). In fairness, Hall did engage in a deconstruction of nationalism in his later work on identity (Hall, 1986, 1996a; 1999c, 2003, 2005; Martin &
Hall, 1997). In this context, Hall and his collaborators challenged the 'identity politics'
Rojek, 2003) 65 There may be, in fact, various explanation for the absence of a direct engagement with nations and nationalism in this model of the reproduction of ideology via meaning-making practices For instance, Hall relied on the semiotic modeling of'culture', which focuses the attention of the researcher on the systematicity and the rules, at the expense of a questioning of its boundaries Another possible reason may be the enthusiastic incorporation of Gramsci's notion of the national-popular in the theoretical reflection on ideology, as well as on the role of the intellectual (for this argument, see Gilroy, 1987, 1993, McRobbie, 1992) Forgas (1999) argues that Gramsci envisaged his work as a nation-building project While I cannot go into this argument here, it is important to mention that a branch of cultural studies (outside of the Birmingham Centre) focuses on the question of cultural policy, "making the co-operation between culture, theory and government respectable, if not uncontroversial" (During, 2005, p 74) This work often adopts a nation-building agenda (Schlesinger, 1991, 2008) 75 agenda of the government66, analyzing the ideological composition of the dominant discourses of British nationalism (Boswell & Evans, 1999; Gilroy, 1987, 1993; Hall,
1990a; Morley & Robins, 2001). Yet, Hall's interest in the possibility of resistance to dominant ideologies has also resulted in an ambivalence to nationalism: particularly in post-colonial settings, Hall espoused a "little 'strategic essentialism'" (Rojek, 2003, p. 7), seeing a potential for freedom and equality in the mobilization power of nationalism.
Such opportunism is however typical for Marxists, who have embraced nationalism's mobilizing potential while rejecting its divisive force67.
While the Birmingham Centre's discussion of ideology and meaning opened up new avenues for thinking of nations and nationalism as meaning-making mechanisms, those avenues were not integrated in the theoretical models of mass media. The historical role of nationalism in (in)forming both the system of meanings within which media come to be understood and the material conditions within which they are developed has not been discussed.
2.2.2.4 Media, simulated realities and the end of grand narratives
From the 1990s on, postmodernist and cultural globalization arguments and models have started to influence the field of communication (Merrin, 2005; Mumby, 1997; Sparks,
2007). Such arguments are best understood as "competing paradigms and discourses"
(Kellner, 1995b, p. 46), sharing the premise that we now live in a qualitatively different world, marked by a transformation of social structures, culture, knowledge and identity
66 Identity politics refers to "a politics engaged on behalf of those with particular identities" (During, 2005, p. 147). 67 Seen as an artificial separation of the working class into 'national' groups. The intellectual context of this problematic has also been addressed in a footnote above. 76
(Curran & Park, 2000; Best & Kellner, 1997; Kellner, 1988, 1995b; Morley, 2000;
Morley & Robins, 1995; Rantanen,2005; Sparks, 2007).
In communication studies, these perspective have often been discussed in terms of the necessity to pay attention to communicative processes across national boundaries
(Appardurai, 2000; Curran & Park, 2000; Sparks, 2007); they have also been associated with the rejection of'grand narratives' (Lyotard, 1979/ 1984) and of essentialism, and the increased emphasis on indeterminacy and contingency (Best & Kellner, 1997; Mumby,
1997) brought along by post-modernist and critical epistemologies. Yet, a side-effect of these trends was the premature displacement of the problematic of nations and nationalism from the reflection on communication media. Instead, mass media - and particularly new media - became touted as enablers of globalization processes, with little interest in how the discourse of'globalization' already frames the agenda of research instead of being an object of inquiry in itself68.
Among postmodernists, Jean Baudnllard and Jean-Francois Lyotard have brought media to the centre of these transformative processes (Kellner, 1988, 1995b). For both, the prevalence of media in contemporary world is altering the social configuration, dealing away with the structures of modernity. Baudrillard (1994, 1996) saw media as creating a virtual, simulated and capitalist form of reality69. For him, we are no longer experiencing the 'real' world, but we consume the 'meaning' bestowed upon the 'real'
68 See for instance Curran & Park's (2000) argument that under the impact of globalization literature, the field of media studies has developed a set of'conventional wisdoms' that is seldom engaged with Interestingly, the authors point out that the internationalization of the media system is often erased by the enthusiasm with or fear of globalization Instead of seeking to lecord 'globalization processes', the authors argue that looking at how national media systems function in particular contexts may be a more fruitful approach to understanding the state of mass media today 69In his work, Baudnllard has criticized structuralism and semiology, arguing that signs are now separated from referents for example, televised advertising does not sell objects, but ideas or meanings Objects come to stand for those ideas and meanings (Baudnllard 1996, also Poster 2001) 77 world by various codes. In Baudrillard's simulated reality, there is no space for rationality; there are only codes that manipulate meaning70. For Lyotard (1979/ 1984), the radical social transformation that we are allegedly experiencing was slightly different: it consisted of a change in the nature of knowledge itself, under the pressure of capitalist dynamics and the ubiquity of information-processing technologies (the computer). These factors were seen as altering not only what counted as knowledge, but also the relation between its producers and consumers. Importantly, for Lyotard, the production of knowledge was no longer under the traditional control of nation-states; in fact, the narrative of nationalism itself was now under question, as discourses seeking to explain the social world were allegedly loosing their legitimacy, becoming provisional and contextual (Lyotard, 1979/ 1984, p. 60; also Gane, 2002, p. 100; Poster, 2006, p. 131).
Postmodern models are essentially prescribing a new role of communication media. They shift the focus from mass media in general to computers, databases and the internet, all seen as tokens of a different social framework in which nations are becoming increasingly obsolete - or at least emptied of their original meaning71. These models are of interest here particularly in terms of their construction of ICTs as tools through which the "postmodern small story" can be deployed (Poster, 2006, p. 132). From this perspective, ICTs lend themselves to being depicted as both the cause of and the means through which postmodern and global models are coming into place; importantly, such
70Habermas has attacked postmodernism precisely on the grounds that critical rationality remains possible (see Jameson 1984, pp 58-9) 71 In the discussions over the implosion of the boundary between real and virtual, or of the death of grand narratives, the nation seems to loose its grip over our imagination For example, Lash (1988) has talked about this process as one of post-modern de-differentiation, where boundaries between author/ oeuvre, theory/ literature, high/popular culture, or social/ culture are collapsed Lyotard has also argued that modernity was an authoritarian project pushing for cultural unity, which is now replaced by a liberating, post-modern culture (Gane, 2002) If one adopts this point of view, it is easy to argue that nations (seen as a product of modernity) are becoming obsolete 78 models are often seen as challenging or weakening the nation (e.g. Deibert, 1997; Poster,
1990, 2006; Sassen, 2000).
Yet, as programmatic as these arguments may appear, they remain insufficiently developed: the death of 'grand narratives' remains to be further explained, particularly since ideologies remain as potent as ever. The question of how new media become imagined and deployed in relation to the existing communication systems seems ignored.
Cultural globalization theorists such as Frederic Jameson, Mike Featherstone or John
Tomlinson have emphasized that media are a part of the heterogeneous cultural terrain where different interests struggle to define meanings and messages (Darling-Wolf, 2008;
Featherstone, 1995; Robertson, 1990, 1992). Perhaps the interesting question to be pursued here is not the relation between the global and the national, but rather the processes through which boundaries (local, national, regional, international, global etc.) are being drawn and the power lines that these boundary-drawing processes (in)form.
2.2.3 Medium theory
Distinct from both the message transmission and the critical approaches, medium theory focused on the relation between the features of the medium and social structures72. If the models discussed above have looked at media as "content without technology" (Agar,
2005), medium theory brought to the field of communication an intellectual tradition concerned with the social dimension of technology. Central to the interests of this thesis, this model explicitly connected communication media to political forms of organization;
72 Medium theory was developed by Harold Innis and subsequently popularized by Marshall McLuhan. Other authors, such as Elizabeth Einsenstein and Walter Ong, have undertaken medium theory based accounts of media histories. More recently, Joshua Meyrowitz, Mark Poster and Ronald Deibert have adapted this theory to a discussion of ICTs. 79 however, unlike the approach here, this model saw these features as a consequence of the
'nature' of the medium itself, unproblematically leading to the formation of specific social structures.
Medium theory was developed by Canadian scholar Harold Innis, who argued that the medium of communication structures the process of communication in a particular way, facilitating the creation of specific forms of knowledge, subjectivities, institutions and power structures (Innis, 1951). Thus, the particular features of each communication medium were seen as inducing a time/ space bias in civilizations: for example, writing in stone was durable, but the final product was hard to transport, thus introducing a bias towards time in those societies. In societies dependent on this medium, Innis argued, knowledge was preserved in a rigid way, encouraging an interest in control over time and the preservation of tradition. In this way, the alleged natural features of the dominant medium were seen as influencing the organization of knowledge in society, facilitating the creation of monopolies or oligopolies of knowledge upon which social structures were being formed.
Innis' ideas were further developed by Marshall McLuhan, for whom the features of media were 'moulding' our senses and, through them, influencing our ways of thinking and thus the social structure. McLuhan (1962) was particularly interested in the differences between the oral and written media, seeing them as bringing about two distinct "forms of thought and of the organization of experience in society and politics"
(McLuhan, 1962, p. 1). With the advent of radio and television, McLuhan argued, we were exiting the 'typographic' age and entering the 'electronic age'. Where the first was an age of vernacular nationalisms, the second allegedly pushed societies into a form of 80 mediated orality, bringing the world together into a 'global village'. As we have seen above, many postmodernist and globalization accounts shared, along with McLuhan, this
causal understanding of the relation between electronic media and the creation of the global world73.
Like Benedict Anderson, McLuhan linked print to the emergence of vernacular nationalisms: "for the hot medium of print enabled men to see their vernacular for the
first time, and to visualize national unity and power in terms of the vernacular bonds"
(McLuhan, 1963, p. 138). The uniformization, homogenization and generalizations
allegedly brought by print facilitated, in McLuhan's view, the spread of nationalism: "it may well be that print and nationalism are axiological or co-ordinate simply because by print a people sees itself for the first time" (McLuhan, 1963, p. 214)74.
While this theoretical model brings into discussion the relation between media
and socio-political forms of organization, its approach to media remains highly problematic. Assessing the inner features of a medium is not a transparent task. In the particular case of the internet, those features may not be easy to identify for a variety of reasons, including the fact that the medium's social roles have not yet completely
stabilize. This thesis takes from medium theory the interest in the relation between media
and social structures, but it envisages this relation in a different way: it asks how the
features and the social role of a medium come to be constructed.
73 Although in McLuhan's case it is not clear whether the 'global village' is a reason for celebration, particularly given his discussion of the link between orality and closed societies This discussion was inspired by Karl Popper's (1966) work on closed/ open societies, Popper had defined closed societies as collectivist ones, oppressing the individual and restricting her critical thinking 74This discussion has been furthered by Elizabeth Eisenstein's (1979) historical study of the introduction of print in 15th century Europe Perhaps more clearly than Innis and McLuhan, Eisenstem shows that print is only one agent of change among many However, Eisenstem notes that print may be as likely to encourage homogenization as it is to encourage heterogeneity (1979, p 84) 81
2.3 Summary
This chapter has provided an overview of the relation between communication media and nationalism within the context of two disciplines: nationalism and communication studies. The purpose of this overview was to show that while each field has added to the clarification of this relation, neither has actually placed it at the centre of their theoretical concerns.
Within the field of nationalism studies, the recuperation of the cultural dimension of nationalism remains an open project. Nationalism continues to be understood primarily as a political movement or ideology, centred upon the congruence between a group of people, a territory and a state (e.g. Bereciartu, 1986/1994; Breuilly, 1982; Brubaker,
1996; Guibernau, 1999; Hechter, 2000; Mann, 1995). Yet, as Chantal Mouffe has argued,
"the political cannot be restricted to a certain type of institution, or envisaged as constituting a specific sphere or level of society. It must be conceived as a dimension that is inherent to every human society and that determines our very ontological condition"
(1993, p. 3).
In this thesis, nationalism is approached from a discursive, rather than political perspective. This means that nationalism is understood in terms of the stories and arguments it proposes, with the understanding that these stories are neither homogeneous nor necessarily coherent with each other. Furthermore, this thesis departs from the traditional approach to media as channels through which nationalism is being spread, focusing instead on how the discourse of nationalism plays into the conceptualization and development of a medium in its early stages. 82
Within the field of communication studies, nationalism has been relegated to a marginal position. Probably the most important shift in the discussion of nations within this field has been the increasing normative scepticism on the 'nation' as a category of analysis (Brubaker & Cooper, 2000). However, as I have tried to show above, media remain widely conceptualized as either institutions co-opted by capitalism, or as transmitters of an ideological content. The relation between nationalism and communication media remains formulated in terms of the question of ideological reproduction. Yet, as communication comes to be understood as crucial to all aspects of social life, it is necessary to inquire how we come to imagine communication media; I am arguing here that this process of imagining media has to be approached as part and parcel of the ideological struggle over meaning. In other words, we should not only ask how media contributes to the maintenance of nationalism or to the spread of globalization, but also how discourses of nationalism and globalization shape our images of what media are, what they do and for what purposes. 83
Chapter 3: Theoretical Framework - Ideology, Discourse and Meaning-Making
The previous chapter has reviewed the ways in which the relation between mass media
and nationalism has been conceptualized in the fields of nationalism and communication
studies. While media has often been regarded as central to the construction of nations and the popularization of nationalism, the process through which a medium comes to be associated with a national agenda and often imagined as a nation-building tool (see
Schlesinger, 1991, 2007, 2008) are seldom brought to the forefront. Yet, given the ubiquity of new media in our lives and the big claims through which they are introduced,
questioning how we come to imagine, think of and thus further act in respect to the
internet becomes crucial. Such questions prompt us to reflect upon the discourses through which we come to understand the world, as well as the power relations that they
legitimize. For, if indeed the internet is a "symbol of our age" (Zizek, 1989), then we
need to consider what this symbol stands for and how the imagery associated with it
resonates with our social imaginaries (Taylor, 2002).
This thesis proposes an investigation into the role of contemporary discourses of
nationalism and globalization in the ways we come to speak about the internet. This
approach is informed by two related theoretical models of the relation between language
and power: the discussion of ideology and meaning-making proposed by Stuart Hall, and
the discursive model developed by Michel Foucault. For both authors, the ways in which
we come to talk about something are intrinsically connected to the the networks of power
(in)forming the social body. 84
Historical approaches to communication media have suggested that the introduction and popularization of these technologies have been accompanied by their
'nationalization'75; I am building here on Silverstone et al.'s (1989) model of the
'domestication' of television through its incorporation into the household. I prefer however to speak of 'nationalization' to refer to the process through which the internet becomes incorporated within the national imagination (in terms of its expected social roles and functions) and integrated into the existing "national communication systems"
(Carey, 1998).
In the domestication model (Silverstone et al., 1989; Silverstone, 2005), the emphasis however was on recuperating the everyday life as a site where communication media are negotiated and made-sense of. For Silverstone, television had to be understood as permeated by "essential tensions" (2005, p. x); as he further argued, "we need to think about television as embedded in the multiple discourses of everyday life. And we need to understand what those discourses are, how they are themselves determined, how they interweave and, most crucially, how they are to be distinguished in terms of their influence relative to each other" (2005, pp. ix-x). Here however, the interest is in bringing together the official discourses through which the internet is being proposed and the assimilation of those discourses in everyday life. Thus, one of the specific focuses of this thesis is its interest in understanding the connection between macro discourses and their incorporation on a micro level76.
75 See for example the histories of print (Eisenstein, 1979), telegraphy (Standage, 1998) or telephony (Fischer, 1992). More on this 'nationalization' process in Chapter 5. 76 As the Dictionary of Social Sciences defines it, the macro level refers to "social systems or populations on a large scale or at a high level of abstraction" (Macrosociology 2002); the micro level refers to concrete interactions between individuals in the context of everyday life. 85
This chapter will offer an overview of the theoretical framework underpinning this research question. For this purpose, the chapter presents an overview of the assumptions framing the approach of this thesis; these assumptions are rooted in an ongoing concern with the relation between power and the ways in which we think, or, in other words, with ideology. In the second part, this chapter engages with the conceptualization of ideology from 'false consciousness' to Hall's model of hegemony, articulation and interpellation, and to Foucault's model of discourses and power.
Importantly, this chapter does not seek to provide a comprehensive review of these two models, but merely to outline the ways in which they provide an useful theoretical framework for the research question studied here.
3.1 Goals, definitions and assumptions framing the theoretical approach
The over-arching goal of this research is to recuperate nationalism as an important discourse in the social negotiation of a particular medium, the internet. This goal is not guided by the desire to provide solutions for the introduction of a new technology; rather, this thesis seeks to expose the dynamics of power involved in this process and to question the ways in which society becomes constituted (Horkheimer, 1937/1982, p. 207).
As outlined in the introduction, nationalism is approached here as the discursive field (in)forming the concept of the 'nation': what the nation is, what its features are, how it has been formed etc. (see Bourdieu, 1991, p. 263; also Calhoun, 1997). Based on
Foucault's (1972) model, discourses are understood as networks of relations among concepts and of rules informing these relations. Thus, nationalism can be defined as a system of conceptual relations and rules that (in)form the 'nation': "practices that 86 systematically form the objects of which they speak" (Foucault, 1972, p. 49). This system of relations not only explains the core term, but also delimits it in terms of "the spectrum of what can be said and what can be done" (Jager, 2001, p. 34).
This discursive approach recommends that nationalism should be understood as providing the background for meaning-making activities on both macro and micro levels
(see also section 2.1.2.1.3), or, in the words of AllettaNorval, the "discursive horizons of meaning" and "the order of truth within which people make sense of their own reality"(1996, pp. 59-70). Importantly, this perspective is not dissimilar from Gellner's observation that "...nations can be defined only in terms of the age of nationalism, rather than, as you might expect, the other way around" (Gellner, 1983, p. 55). From an analytic perspective, the two concepts - 'nation' and 'nationalism' - are meaningful only in relation to each other77. Section 2.1.1.1 has sketched some of the core conceptual relations (the logic of nationalism) through which the category of'nation' is constructed.
Like religion and kinship, nationalism offers a vocabulary of legitimation for social arrangements and a moral universe for evaluating social actions (Anderson, 1983).
While nationalism may be most visible in politics, its teleology, the power relationships it prescribes and the values associated with them are in fact constitutive of the social on the level of both institutions and individual meaning-making. Yet, these discursive functions should not obscure the emotional attachment that people feel for their nations (Smith,
2000). In this respect, nationalism fills in the void left by religious explanations, offering
"a secular transformation of fatality into continuity, contingency into meaning... few things were (are) better suited to this end than an idea of nation" (Anderson, 1983, p. 11).
77 This should not be taken as denying the material existence of nations (in the form of nation-states or national institutions) or the feelings of national identification that people may experience. 87
It provides a primordial level of what Anthony Giddens has termed an 'ontological security': "the confidence that most human beings have in the continuity of their self- identity and in the constancy of the surrounding social and material environments of action" (Giddens, 1990, p. 92). As a discourse, nationalism relies on drawing specific boundaries around 'safe' spaces: spaces of security, of trust and of mutual understanding.
This is not only a cognitive process, but a core emotional dimension of our psychology. Ideology - and nationalism certainly fits the description - is not the 'veil' over a 'kernel of truth' or a distortion of reality. Rather, it is a form of thought which, as Slavo
Zizek has argued, helps us cope with the violence of existence: "in its basic dimension
[ideology] is a fantasy-construction which serves as a support for our 'reality' itself, namely the fundamental (and psychologically traumatic) antagonism of the inescapability of death, of inequality and of powerlessness (1989, p. 45). As Zizek further proposed, understanding ideology as that which makes this 'trauma' of existence acceptable and meaningful (by taming it in the form of an alleged explanation of how things work in this world) implies recognizing the weaving of reason and emotions.
In this thesis, the 'nation' as a concept is approached from a critical position: I do not take the "we" of nationalism as a reality from whose perspective (and for whose benefit) I am doing my research (Horkheimer, 1982, p. 210)78. As discussed in Chapter 2, modernist theories of nations and nationalisms have exposed the historical processes through which nations emerged as central social categories in the modern imaginaries in tandem with the rise of nationalism as a political doctrine. Importantly here, in the case of
Canada the 'nation' is still a relatively recent project; what appears to be at stake is not so
78The emotional attachment people feel towards nations may be intersubjective, but this in itself is not a reason why we should start our thinking from its vantage point (i.e. as members of the nation). 88 much the social engineering of the nation, but rather its on-going reproduction and maintenance (Billig, 1995).
My own position on nationalism also stems from an intellectual uneasiness with the weaving of reason and emotions mentioned above79.1 am particularly concerned with the difference that nationalism is legitimizing as a basis for sorting people and evaluating their actions; for, the category of the 'nation' remains rooted in a negative understanding of difference80. This uneasiness translates into an ongoing questioning of the source of one's emotional identification with the nation, but also of the boundary upon which the
'nation' is predicated: who is included in the 'nation' and who gets to define it. This drawing of the boundaries of the 'nation' remains an important source of structural violence (Galtung, 1969) against 'the other', a violence that we become acutely aware of when experiencing a particular nationalism from the position of the "Other"81 In this respect, my own epistemological position is that our knowledge of the world is permeated by power and thus requires a constant reflexivity as to the interests it serves, the boundaries of difference it erects and the ways in which it attempts to regulate our own
79I am not contesting what is referred to as emotional knowledge It is the uncritical use of beliefs as the ultimate justification of morality or of the configuration of power that I am wary of As Adorno argued, the danger to critical thinking comes from dividing yourself into the subject seeking knowledge and the subject who believes The consequence of this division is that you can no longer critically scrutinize your beliefs (Adorno, 2001, p 193) 80 The question of difference (the relation between 'self and 'Other') is a very complex one While I am arguing here that a negative conception of difference lies at the core of nationalism (of the type "whomever is not part of the nation remains a stranger forever"), I realize that it is possible to argue that nationalism does not have to take a negative view of difference In fact, I think this is what Habermas' post- national model or Kymlicka's multicultural citizneship model are trying to achieve a model where the difference is recognized in rational terms (or, to put it differently, a model of a civic nation that accepts the relativity of knowledge without ending up in nihilism) However, I am warry of the distance between 'ideal' social models and their applicability in practice, particularly given the constraints stemming from the existing mentalities, practices and material infrastructures 81 The concept of structural violence is borrowed from the work of Johann Galtung (1969, 1996) It refers to the violence or oppression that is "built into the structure and shows up as unequal power and consequently as unequal life chances" (Galtung, 1969, p 170) For example, one form of structural violence perpetrated by the nation-state is the exclusion or marginahzation of immigrants from decision-making processes (e g through exclusion from the right to vote) 89 identities and lives82. To paraphrase Theodor Adorno, as a critical thinker, I try to remain aware of the tension between the will to critically investigate my own 'knowledge' and the discourse of the social institutions within which I live, which pressure me to speak 'as a member' of a collective (Adorno, 2001, p 75).
This refusal to buy into nationalism may be problematic, "since [critical thinking] runs counter to prevailing habits of thought [...] it appears to be biased and unjust"
(Horkheimer, 1937/1982, p. 218). In particular, some nationalist projects have been praised for their emancipatory/ empowering potential (e.g. Breuilly, 1982; Gilory, 1987,
1993; Hall, 1990, 1997b; Hall & Back, 2009; Melucci, 1996). The question of this
strategic usefulness of nationalism remains problematic (and in fairness, scholars like
Gilroy and Hall have discussed the long-term dangers of mobilization via essentializing groups and identities), but it does prompt the researcher to consider both the emotional
aspect of nationalism and the contexts within which it may be at work.
Based on the understanding of nationalism outlined above, the core assumptions of this thesis can be summarized as follows:
• The internet is seen as a social construct (Berger & Luckmann, 1966/1991) whose
meaning, uses, functions, values etc. are the result of a constant social negotiation
among various types of actors (e.g. governments, mass media, schools,
individuals, etc.). This approach is informed by the school of thought known as
the social construction of technology, whose critical impetus challenges the idea
82 Consequently, this does not mean that I advocate here a radical overturn of the nation-state. I think however that it is crucial to preserve one's critical reflexivity on the relation between ideas and their material conditions; in this case, between nationalism and nation-states/ national institutions. 90
of given 'technological objects' by exposing the ongoing mutual shaping between
the social and the technical (Bijker & Law, 1992; Feenberg, 1999; Grint &
Woolgar, 1997; MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1985; Williams, 1997; Winner, 1985).
This thesis does not assume that the introduction of the internet is a
straightforward process of technological adoption, where the internet, endowed
with intrinsic features and capabilities, meets a social need and therefore becomes
an ubiquitous aspect of modern life in Canada. Following Keith Grint and Steve
Woolgar's (1997) recommendation, the internet is understood as a text: "a
technology's capacity and capability is never transparently obvious and
necessarily requires some form of interpretation; technology does not speak for
itself but has to be spoken for" (1997, p. 32)83.
• Although it is assumed here that nationalism plays a role in the construction of the
internet as an object of discourse, I also recognize that this discourse is not the
only one involved in this discursive negotiation. However, globalization is the
only other discourse considered here; the coupling of nationalism and
globalization discourses has already been discussed in Chapters 1 and 2.
Importantly however, nationalism has traditionally implied an inter-national
dimension, and as such has become an 'universal' discourse in itself. Thus, the
question to be asked here is why this international dimension gives way to
globalization discourses and what is different about them.
83 This does not mean that the internet does not have a material aspect, however, the format and use of this material aspect is not understood here as something that pertains to the 'inner nature' of the internet, but as produced in a discursive manner in various sites, such as public policy and mass media, as well as in our own everyday life appropriations of the internet 91
• Finally, a rather problematic assumption is that of ascribing discourses a certain
degree of agency. This subjectification of discourses has been widely criticized
particularly in respect to Foucault's work; this issue will be addressed in the
remainder of this chapter. However, when one is interested in nationalism from a
macro perspective, a certain subjectification seems to me inevitable. This doesn't
mean that nationalism is considered as an autonomous force; while it is quite clear
that various institutions are able to imprint particular directions within the
discourse of nationalism, intentionality, authorship and effects on individuals are
hard to assess on the macro level. In undertaking this research, I have tried to
avoid a deterministic interpretation of the role of discourses/ ideologies on
individuals, by acknowledging people's capacity to become reflexive about and
resist ideologies. Although we are compelled to become 'competent' speakers in
order to be understood and to be integrated socially, this does not mean we don't
have the ability to recognize the role, use and even content of that competence
vis-a-vis our position in the social structure (Bourdieu, 1991). The interesting
question to be pursued throughout this research is precisely this relation between
what appears as a 'determining' macro discourse and the individual re-
articulations of it. 92
3.2 "Comment Ton pense"84: From Ideology to Representation and Discourse
The difficulty of defining 'ideology' stems from its Marxist legacy, which entrenched the concept as central to an economic, class-based understanding of social organization
(Plamenatz, 1970; Thompson, 1984, 1990). Another point of contention stems from its characterization as a 'false consciousness', with the implication there is a standard of objective 'truth' against which this 'false consciousness' can be measured. Thus, at the core of'ideology' lies the question of'how we think'.
It may be worth to remember that, in spite of its Marxist heritage, 'ideology' emerged as a problematic out of the context of the Enlightenment, particularly in the discussion of reason and its capacity to access the 'truth' about the world. As Adorno
(2001) argued, ideology can be countered by critical thinking - the refusal to take things for granted. Yet, by themselves, critical thinking education or skills do not seem to sufficient to counter ideology: on one hand, we are constantly caught between the demands of critical thinking and the social institutions which pressure us to speak/ think as part of the institution/ group. On the other, our emotions are an important aspect of ideological reproduction itself: we feel attached to certain things and this attachment does not (necessarily) change once we get new knowledge about those things.
The next sections will detail the shift in the conceptualization of 'ideology' from
'false consciousness' to hegemony, articulation and interpellation (via Hall) and
'discourses' (via Foucault). The final section will introduce the question of everyday understanding in relation to ideology, using some of the insights opened by the work of communication scholar John Thompson. These authors have been part of the general
84De Tracy (1817, p. 4). My translation: "How we think". 93 scholastic effort to address some of the critiques and limitations of Marxism, by neutralizing the negative connotations of ideology as 'false consciousness' and extending the concept beyond the realm of economics (Thompson, 1990). Ideology thus becomes applicable to the study of any form of knowledge: it is no longer about deceit, misrepresentation or illusions, but about processes of knowing and the relation between knowledge and power in a generic, post-Marxist way85.
3.2.1 The Science of Ideas
In 1798, Destutt de Tracy (1754 — 1836) coined the word 'ideology' as the name for a science of thinking. In three comprehensive volumes, he ambitiously tried to map the elements of thinking, or, in his words, the elements of ideology. Thinking, he argued, was derived from our perceptions and each idea had an origin in our senses (de Tracy, 1817).
Thinking was seen as a beginning with sense-based knowledges, which are subsequently organized according to shared rules, stemming from human cognitive abilities.
De Tracy's effort was one of legitimizing the study of ideas as a scientific endeavour that, just like natural sciences, could get to the 'true' nature of the world. In showing that thinking was a rule-based activity, de Tracy argued two things: first, that reason was rule-bound; and second, that 'truth' could be accessed through the proper use of these rules. In this model, ideas may be wrongly arranged; access to 'truth' became a matter of questioning the arrangement of ideas in our minds and tracing their origin back to perceptions.
85 In the sense Foucault gives to this post-Marxist view of power as relations that are coexistent with social relations and interwoven "with other kinds of relations (production, kinship, family, sexuality) for which they play at once a conditioning and a conditioned role" (1980, p 142) 94
The idea of one 'right' set of rules for thinking had inevitably politicized the discussion of'ideology': de Tracy's most vehement critic was Napoleon Bonaparte, who accused the ideologues of encouraging "a thoroughgoing scepticism toward all authoritative knowledge" (Hawkes, 2003, p. 61). He understood that de Tracy's work had political effects: "if the ideologues were allowed to pursue their millennial aims,
[Napoleon] foresaw a permanent revolution, a maelstrom in which ideas were continually being unmasked, invalidated and replaced by new ones" (Hawkes, 2003, p. 61).
To this day, ideology remains, in its vernacular use, a derogatory word for "a body of ideas which are alleged to be erroneous" (Thompson, 1990, p. 32) used primarily in the sphere of politics. Although I am not working with this vernacular understanding of ideology, I operate from the vantage point of the belief in the potential of critical thinking to expose the relation between power structures and ideology. Thus, this thesis engages in a critique of nationalism, by asking how discourses help integrate new elements into the existing meaning-making practices. In so doing, this thesis anchors itself in reason and its capacity to critically reflect upon itself.
3.2.2 The false consciousness
From its inception, ideology had to do with the rules according to which we perceive, order and classify the world. Ideas were understood as products of our consciousness.
Against this background86, Karl Marx had argued that ideas were not the result of our consciousness, but the result of the material conditions of production. Although not
86I am referring here to the dispute between Marx and Engels, and the Young Hegelians which constituted the background against which Marxist thought developed. The Young Hegelians saw ideas as "products of consciousness, to which they attribute an independent existence [...]" (Marx & Engels, 1970, p 41). 95 espousing Marx's economic perspective87, this thesis starts from the premise that ideas are not merely products of our thought; rather, they are seen as "interwoven with the material activity" (Marx & Engels, 1970, p. 47). Thus, I am interested in the connections between the ways in which we come to think of the internet and the material conditions within which these conceptualizations are formed.
Marx and Engels famously wrote that "men [sic] are the producers of their own conceptions" and that "life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life"
(1970, p. 47). They meant that our ideas were determined by our position in the material structure; we produced our own ideas within the context provided to us by our position in the society. Yet, in spite of subsequent accusations, this was not a purely deterministic position: people also changed their environment (and thus the social structures), so their ideas had to be understood as a dialectic between thought "as determined by the conditions of life, and the transformations of these conditions" (Arthur, 1970, p. 21)88.
Importantly, Marx and Engels proposed that the dominant ideas of an epoch were the ideas of the ruling class; these ideas shaped the consciousness of other classes and facilitated the legitimation of oppressive power relations (Marx & Engels, 1970, pp. 64-
65). Marx and Engels further argued that the elites controlling the material conditions were also controlling "the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it"
(1970, p. 64). Thus, the dominant ideas were seen "as the only rational, universal valid one[s]", in spite of the fact that they misrepresented economic relations as a 'natural
87A possibility opened by post-Marxist models, especially by the work of Hall and Foucault discussed next. 88 See also Marx and Engels (1970), especially pp. 46-47. 96 order', thus enrolling people into specific class consciousnesses (Marx & Engels, 1970, p.
66).
Although the details of this process of circulation of ideas were not very clearly explained by Marx89, other scholars (among which Stuart Hall and Michel Foucault) have proposed alternative models for interpreting this process. The most insightful glimpse into how ideologies work comes from Marx's explanation of the economic structure as composed of different, yet united, spheres - exchange, capital, production, consumption90.
For Marx, these spheres were interlinked, shaping each other in multiple ways; however, only consumption was visible to people (who got compensated for their work, and were able to use that money to purchase goods). The interweaving between consumption and the other economic spheres (exchange, capital, production) remained hidden; the relations of consumption concealed the real mode of production (oppression of labour, alienation and domination); as a result, the capitalist mode of production appeared to people as simply a relation of exchange (money for labour). The work of ideology relied
on this common sense notion (money for labour), masking the reality of oppression (Hall,
1977, pp. 59-63).
However, the relation between ideas and material conditions was not to be understood in a causal manner91. As Hall (1977) argued, Marx grew increasingly aware of the complexity of the relation between ideology, the political sphere and the modes of
8,As Plamenatz (1970) notes, Marx's work remains silent on what exactly happens when material conditions 'determine' or 'shape' ideas, and when ideas 'determine' or 'shape' consciousness. 90This discussion is presented by Marx in the "Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy" (1857) (Marx & Engels, 1970). Some ideas are also offered in Marx and Engels' discussion of relation between ideas and material circumstances in German Ideology (1970), especially the section "First Premises of Materialist Method". 9lThe simple causality (or the determinacy) argument has to do with the idea that the economic (the mode of production, or the base) determines everything else in society (the superstructure) (Hall, 1977). 97 production, distancing himself from a simple economic reductionism (ideas and political forms determined by modes of production). Instead, he saw ideas, political forms and economic relations as different levels of the social, relating to each other in complex ways and affecting the reproduction/ maintenance of the capitalist mode of production
(Hall, 1977, p. 56). However, the question of how all of these social relations shaped each other, as well as the mechanics of this shaping, was not elucidated.
One of the main difficulty with this model came from Marx's ambiguous use of
'ideology' (Plamenatz, 1970; Thompson, 1990). Marx and Engels often referred to ideas as 'phantoms' or 'illusions' in our brains, and to ideology as a 'false consciousness'. Ideas were 'false' because they were produced a), under particular material conditions; and b). to justify and reproduce these material conditions (ultimately formed by the prevailing mode of production). In other words, they were false because they were 'mystifying' the real power lines as a 'natural order', making people accept a social organization that worked against their own interests. But, as Plamenatz argued, an ideology is not necessarily 'false' (though it can include false ideas); it is rather that ideas are "accepted uncritically, or, if not always uncritically, then for other reasons besides their being thought to be true. No doubt, those who accept them believe that they are true" (1970, p.
79).
More interesting here is the relation between ideas and power; as Thompson
(1990, pp. 60-67) proposed, ideology serves particular functions in relation to social structures: legitimizing power relations and the distribution of resources; concealing
(dissimulating) domination; constructing collective forms of identity which efface power relations and the oppression perpetrated by them; fragmenting the oppressed into sub- 98 groups, diminishing their capacity to change the social structure; and finally, reifying the relations of domination as a permanent and natural state of affairs. From this perspective, nationalism and globalization are important particularly in terms of their legitimation functions; the question is: what kind of social structures they legitimize? Furthermore, what happens to the existing structures? For, if indeed people "individualise themselves only within society" (Marx, 1970, p. 125), then the question of how we imagine this society is of uttermost importance. The Marxist model however does not explain how our
(ideological) understandings of social relations are formed. As Thompson (1984, 1990) argued, to get an insight into how this (ideological) understanding of society is formed, it is necessary to move from the official representations to the level of everyday understanding; it is at this level that the making-sense of the world reinscribes or resists the relations of power constitutive of society.
3.2.3 Articulation, interpellation and hegemony
Stuart Hall has noted that the problem of'ideology' was "one of the least developed
'regions' in Marxist theory. And even where it is possible to construct the site of ideology, and the general relation of the ideological instance to other instances, the forms and processes specific to this region remain peculiarly ill-defined and underdeveloped" (Hall,
1978, p. 28). There was a need, he argued, for an adequate theory of representation able to address questions such as: how do ideas connect to power? How do they "form" our consciousness? What is the relation between culture and ideology? What is the relation between various ideologies? What makes a concept or an idea ideological? 99
Hall's engagement with this problematic was undertaken primarily during the
1960s - 1980s (Hall, 1999; Rojek, 2003, 2007). The core concern was the recuperation of culture within Marxism and its reformulation away from elitist definitions (During, 2005;
Hall, 1980; 2007; Lutter & Reisenleitner, 2002; Sparks, 1989). Hall argued that culture was relatively autonomous from the economic sphere and raised the question of agency in the process of reception (Sparks, 1996). Borrowing from the work of Antonio Gramsci,
Louis Althusser and Ernesto Laclau, Hall introduced the concepts of articulation, interpellation and hegemony into the discussion of'ideology'. These three concepts are crucial to my work here, both in terms of their influence on how I conceptualize nationalism and globalization, and in terms of recommending a specific method of analysis and interpretation (namely critical discourse analysis).
3.2.3.1 Articulation
The idea of 'articulation' provides an analytic model for understanding how words, symbols and ideas may come together as part of an ideology, without necessarily being
'ideological' (in the sense that they are necessarily false or that they cannot be used outside of the ideological context). In a nutshell, articulation proposes that what binds the elements of an ideology together is not the meaning of the words, but the relation between the organization of these elements and particular power arrangements and agendas. Thus, the emphasis is shifted from the meaning of specific elements to the way in which these elements are organized - or, in Hall's words, articulated. This recommends a methodological approach that analyzes the composition of texts by relating them to the context of their production. The crucial questions informing the analysis are thus: How a 100 does a particular articulation occur? What power networks are benefiting from it?
Furthermore, articulation also suggests that an arrangement of elements may be part of not only one, but several ideological formations, which may work together in some contexts, while working against each others in others.
Hall defined articulation as a temporary linkage between discursive elements (e.g. between the different meanings of the concepts92) that could be broken or altered: "an articulation is thus the form of the connection that can make a unity of two different elements, under certain conditions. It is a linkage which is not necessary, determined, absolute and essential for all time" (Hall & Grossberg, 1986, p. 53). Reality, as well as concepts were seen as polysemic; the way in which reality was represented on the discursive level and the way in which a concept became understood in a particular context, were seen as a result of the social forces struggling for access to power91. What this struggle amounted to was an attempt to rally people behind specific agendas, by mobilizing their representations of the world; this mobilization was further understood as relying on the 'common sense' or the intersubjective cultural pool. In that sense, ideology became understood as a mechanism through which people were enlisted behind specific configurations of power. Thus, ideology worked, via language, by reappropriating
92But an articulation can also be a link between distinct social elements or spheres (e g spheres of production, exchange, consumption and production) 931 am using 'social force' (or actors) throughout the rest of the chapter to refer to what Hall (via Gramsci) called a 'historic bloc' or 'power bloc' A historic bloc is a configuration of ideas and politico-economic forces, it implies a configuration of the base and the superstructure However, it may be useful to think of this configurations between ideas, material conditions and social forces more along the lines of Melucci's definition of social movements " what is empirically called a 'movement' and which, for the sake of observational and linguistic convenience, has been attributed an essential unity, is in fact a product of multiple and heterogeneous social processes" (1996, p 20) What brings a movement together - and what a movement also creates at the same time -is a particular social problem to be addressed 101
"potentially multiple sets of meaning" (Lutter & Reisenleitner, 2002, p. 615) and placing them into particular representations (also Donald & Hall, 1986, p. ix).
Hall further defined representation as the process through which we make social reality meaningful:
"it is by our use of things, and what we say, think and feel about them - how we
represent them - that we give them meaning. In part, we give objects, people and
events meaning by the frameworks of interpretation which we bring to them. In
part, we give things meaning by how we use them, or integrate them in our
everyday practices...In part, we give things meanings by how we represent them -
the words we use about them, the ways we classify and conceptualize them, the
values we place on them" (Hall, 1997b, p. 3).
For Hall, all thought - not only ideological one - was representational; representation involved shared values, concepts and views, as well as particular contexts of use (the way we "integrate them in our everyday practices"). Culture, understood as shared sets of meanings, permeated all meaning-making processes (Hall, 1997b). But the relation between culture, thought and ideology remained complex; from a macro, structuralist perspective, culture was defined as the production of collective meaning via particular institutions (e.g. church, folk stories, education, mass media etc.). While the production of culture may be ideological in many ways, Hall's model suggested that ideology was a temporary alignment of ideas and power interests; as such, while shared meanings were brought together with specific power agendas under certain contexts, this linkage was nevertheless temporary94. As Hall (1977, 1979, 1996b) explained, as forms of
94Hall built on Gramsci's notion of 'conjuncture' to refer to the temporary alignment of representations and social forces. In that sense, a conjuncture consists of the economic (material) conditions along with the 102 representation, ideologies were connected to specific social groups; thus, ideological representation selects from the cultural 'pool' specific meanings, that are then re- articulated with the agendas behind various social forces.
This model may suggest that culture is longstanding, while ideology is current and specific; although Hall does not clarify this, I don't think Hall denies the historical dimension of specific ideologies. Instead, his model is best understood as refuting an understanding of historical ideologies (such as capitalism) as homogeneous and stable
systems. In my view, the major contribution that articulation brings to the understanding of ideology is precisely the recommendation that ideological articulations have to be understood (and analyzed) in relation to specific conjunctures (see footnote above). With
articulation, the researcher shifts their attention from a concern with the role of ideology in facilitating historical forms of domination, to an analysis of the complex forces at play in various contexts.
Hall's analysis of Thatcherism provides an example of how articulation could be used as an heuristic for analysis95. The issue under investigation was why the Right
(Thatcherism) was able to rise to power and why the Left was seemingly unable to provide a viable alternative. Using the model of articulation, Hall (1979) analyzed various official speeches, arguing that the rise of the Right had been facilitated by a new arrangement of factors, including new representations, as well as a fundamental
efforts to preserve or undermine them These efforts take the form of specific representations, seeking to mobilize people behind particular agendas Furthermore, a conjuncture always involves multiple forms of representation, representing different interests In turn, this opens the door to new arrangements of forces, so in this sense a conjuncture is also formative of new forces and as such, allows transformation to occur (see Hall, 1979) 95Since the goal of this chapter is to outline those theoretical elements that are central to this research project, I will not engage here with a full discussion of the critique of Hall's analysis of Thatcherism (as exemplified in the debates between Hall and Bob Jessop published in the New Left Review) (see Bonnettt et al, 1985) For an outline of those debates, see Wood (1998) 103 contradiction within the Left96. To gain access to power, the Left needed to shift from speaking on behalf of labour, to speaking on behalf of all citizens. The Left did this by relying upon the rhetoric of 'national interest'; but in so doing, it found itself ignoring the specific interests of labour or unions, thus alienating its own electoral base. In this context, the Right was able to use a populist discourse and position itself as a defender of the 'people' against the capital/ state. This new articulation of elements paved the way for the success of the Right.
But an articulation can be broken (e.g. the case of the broken articulation between the Left and labour interests)97. This also suggests that there is room for individuals to relate to it differently. In this way, Hall was able to recuperate a space of individual agency vis-a-vis ideology - and hence an opening for change - arguing that "[this] enables us to think how an ideology empowers people, enabling them to begin to make some sense or intelligibility of their historical situation, without reducing those forms of intelligibility to their socio-economic or class location or social position." (Hall &
Grossberg, 1986, p. 53).
Importantly, this model shifts the concept of ideology away from its Marxist understanding as a tool of the dominant group; instead, ideology becomes a tool for any group competing for access to power (Thompson, 1990). Thus, ideology is no longer associated solely with classes or with political processes (i.e. party politics, electoral debates, public policy discussions etc.), but can be part of any configuration of social
96This was the point of contention between Hall and Jessop (see footnote above) Where Hall argued that the Right, as an ideology, had prepared the ground for the formal taking of power (state control) by creating a populist common sense, Jessop saw ideology as secondary to the transformation of the social structure (the transformation of the state from an interventionist to a neo-hberal model) (Wood, 1998) 97 This opens the question of the relation between ideology and structure if an articulation can be broken, then does this mean that the power structures informing it are changing as welP 104 forces. Specific systems of representations (ideologies), crafted out of the existing cultural and linguistic repertoires, are to be interrogated in terms of their attempts to mobilize social support:
"one has to see the way in which a variety of different social groups enter into and
constitute for a time a kind of political and social force, in part by seeing
themselves reflected as a unified force in the ideology which constitutes them.
The relationship between social forces and ideology is absolutely dialectical. As
the ideological vision emerges, so does the group [...] They only constitute a
political force in so far as they are constituted as new political subjects" (Hall &
Grossenberg, 1986, p. 52).
Articulation is a central concept in this thesis. In particular, articulation suggests an approach to the critique of ideology by analyzing how words, symbols and ideas come together in particular texts. It further proposes that what has to interrogated in such an analysis is not only the meaning of words, but most importantly the relations between them. The question, as Hall argues, is why a particular articulation is being formed and what material forces are benefiting from it. Furthermore, articulation also prompts us to ask how various ideologies (e.g. nationalism and globalization) may work together in some contexts, while working against each others in others.
In this thesis, I rely on articulation to define, delimit and de-construct nationalism and globalization discourses; most importantly, articulation is particularly suitable to analyze the conceptual linkages between these ideologies and the discursive construction of the internet. Thus, I am approaching my data here in terms of the ways in which 105 words, symbols and ideas are being brought together, proposing a particular understanding of the internet.
3.2.3.2 Interpellation
While the concept of articulation was useful for understanding and analyzing ideologies, it did not say much about the relation between the systems of representations proposed by specific social forces and the actual ways in which individuals relate to them. Hall relied on the Althusserian concept of 'interpellation' to explain the relation between ideology and individuals. For Althusser, ideology was no longer 'in our heads', but constitutive of the 'social fabric' itself: ideology constituted individuals as subjects. In other words, ideology patterned individuals; this did not mean that ideology produced our personality, but rather that it created the discursive positions from within which we recognize ourselves as agents and from which we are able to speak in a meaningful way: "each individual is 'always already' a subject who comes to recognize oneself through various ritual practices (such as naming, greeting, praying, voting, etc.) as concrete, distinguishable, and irreplaceable" (Boswell, Kiser & Baker, 1999, p. 360).
These discursive positions, also referred to as subject positions, may appear to us as autonomous - we see ourselves as agents with a choice in selecting particular meanings, worldviews or understandings. Yet, this choice may not be completely divorced from ideological manipulation. Ideologies, argued Althusser, 'hailed' or interpellated us as agents, thus providing the appearance of choice; the choice we have is to respond to the position that ideology provided us with, or to reject it: "we experience ideology as if it emanates freely and spontaneously from within us, as if we were its free 106 subjects, 'working by ourselves'. Actually, we are spoken by and spoken for, in the ideological discourses which await us even at our birth, into which we are born and find our place" (Hall, 1985, p. 109).
Hall exemplified this process of interpellation with a personal story: depending on his location (UK or Jamaica), he would be addressed as a 'West-Indian', 'coloured',
'immigrant', 'black' or 'Negro'. As he described it, "all of them inscribe me 'in place' in a signifying chain which constructs identity through the categories of colour, ethnicity, race" (1985, p. 108). When we occupy such subject positions, we may experience them as a choice - who we 'are' - forgetting that such positions have been opened up by an ideological field within which (and with whose categories) we can meaningfully speak.
The subject positions opened up through interpellating someone as 'black' or 'immigrant' derived their meaning not from the 'essence' of 'black' or 'immigrant', but from a system of representation98. As Donald and Hall (1986, p. xvii) further explained, such positions were not 'natural' or 'biological'; they were symbolically constructed and made sense only in relation to the particular worldviews that have informed them in the first place.
Interpellation was thus a double-edged analytical concept: it re-framed ideology as an ongoing "social process of address" (Therborn, 1980, p. 7), emphasizing the tension between the misrecognition and concealment operated by ideology and the possibility of agency; and it closed down the possibility of resistance, by suggesting that the space of agency is, in fact, an illusion preventing us from realizing that we are not agents, but
98This structuralist view borrows from Saussure's explanation of language as an organized system of relations of difference and similarity In Saussunan thought, the meaning of the word 'cat' does not stem from its relation to the animal, but from a system of differences with other similar words such as 'cut' or 'cot' In this system of differences ('a', not 'u' or 'o'), the word becomes meaningful Similarly, the subject positions opened by interpellation are part of an organized system of classification through which we can speak and understand the world, and not a mirror of'reality' It is in this sense that ideology creates a subject position (as opposed to a subject position being a reflection of a 'natural' state of being) 107 merely parts of an ordered social system based on the exploitation of our labour. This closure, along with other elements of Althusser's model have been criticized for failing to account for the possibility of resistance or of change (see Boswell, Kiser & Baker, 1999;
Therborn, 1980).
Here, interpellation is of interest primarily in terms of its potential to recuperate the level of everyday understandings as a crucial site for ideological reproduction, as well as resistance. The process of interpellation is, as Hall suggests, a site of struggle: people try to impose new meanings and to change the articulations provided by the various dominant ideologies (1985, pp. 111-113). This theoretical sensitivity to resistance is further created by recognizing that there are always multiple and co-existing ideologies.
Thus, it is not simply the case that an ideology creates subject positions only along the lines of oppression/ domination; in fact, there is also the possibility that these subject positions are openings for creative action or social change (Therborn, 1980). The education system, for example, may produce subjectivities that reproduce the given social order; but, at the same time, it also equips students with the skills to question that order and act as agents of change (Boswell, Kiser & Baker, 1999, p. 368). Furthermore, as both
Ernesto Laclau and Stuart Hall proposed, we have always been confronted or interpellated from a plurality of ideological positions; individuals have to reconcile and bring together a diversity of subject positions opened before them: "each individual subject consists of the articulation of multiple ego and alter ideologies. The crucial aspect of ideological struggle is the articulation of a given ideology with other ideologies"
(Boswell, Kiser & Baker, 1999, p. 368). 108
In the context of this project, this argument brings along a sensitivity to the co existence of multiple subject positions from within which individuals come to make sense of new media. Yet, as Hall explained, ideologies can only recommend what "[people] ought to think; the politics that they ought to have" (1985, p. 96). The question of how globalization and nationalism open up such subject positions in the context of thinking about the internet cannot ignore the relation between the official discourses (e.g. policy, media, education) and the everyday understandings of them. To the extent that different channels recommend the same articulations, their 'ideological' work is more effective: as these articulations seem 'confirmed' by various (allegedly) independent sources, they appear as a reflection of the 'natural' order. In this way, ideology works "on us to a large extent unconsciously, in the structures of, for example, 'common sense' and in our acceptance that things are 'natural', 'obvious', and pre-given. Ideology provides us with the bedrock of presuppositions by and in which we make sense of our everyday lives and organize them into categories of our experience" (Donald & Hall, 1986, p. xvii).
3.2.3.3 Hegemony
Where articulation provided a way for conceptualizing the links between ideas and power, and where interpellation brought forward the relation between ideologies and individuals, the idea of hegemony advanced a model for understanding the role of ideology in the reproduction of social order. Thus, hegemony recommended a particular relation between social (material) structures, networks of power and the mobilization of ideas (or of cultural meanings): in a nutshell, it suggested that society is a site of struggle over consent between (as well as within) various associations of actors seeking access to 109 power. These groups and the cultural elements they mobilize around them are however rooted in a social structure that seeks to reproduce itself. Thus, while some groups may work toward the reproduction of that social order, others may work against it".
Hall borrowed the concept of'hegemony' from the works of Antonio Gramsci in order to expand the understanding of power as based not only on coercion, but also on consent. Thus, people's enrolment into uneven power relations can also be understood as a form of seduction: we are not only 'forced' into a social structure (e.g. by the police or the army), but we also agree to becoming a part of it. For Gramsci, power inevitably involved some form of consent of those involved. In this context, hegemony - or the domination of one group over the others - became a process through which a group
"encompasses the interests of other subordinate groups, and begins 'to propagate itself throughout society', bringing about intellectual and moral as well as economic and political unity" (Hall, 1986, p. 14). Consent was thus seen as acquired by incorporating and responding to some of the concerns of the dominated groups100. As Hall observes, through this process, the interests of the dominant group seemed to reflect the 'general interest' of that society (Hall, 1986, p. 14). Importantly, hegemony was never complete: it required an ongoing realignment of the interests of the subordinate groups to the agenda of the dominant group. On the other hand, the interests of the dominant groups - as well as the articulations associated with them - were themselves adjusting to the new circumstances.
"Jonathan Joseph refered to these as the two forms of hegemony: political hegemony, referring to the efforts of political agents to win consent around their particular projects, and structural hegemony, referring to the "process by which social structures are reproduced or transformed" (2002, p. 38). 100 Hobsbwam's discussion of the incorporation of the labor's interests in the UK into the discourse of the nation-state (in the form of social welfare policy) in the inter-war period provides a good example of how, during periods when the interests of the subordinate classes threaten to fundamentally alter the economic structure, they are co-opted into the structure (see Hobsbawm, 1994, especially Chapter 3). 110
Although the degree and form of'consent' remain debatable in my view101, thinking of power as an on-going struggle to secure the cooperation of those who are its objects opens up the possibility of agency on the micro level (individual agency). In principle, it becomes possible to think of ideological struggles aimed at coopting individuals and of the individual's capacity to recognize (and thus give in, reject or attempt to transform) the ideological seduction. Furthermore, through the prism of hegemony, ideology no longer appears as a homogeneous worldview which follows from and legitimizes the economic system; instead, ideological representations, as well as the groups seeking access to power become understood as complex and, to a certain degree, transient configurations of forces. Social change stems from this complexity.
Adopting the model of hegemony to understand the relation between social forces, ideological representations and power helps me to approach nationalism and globalization from the prism of a struggle over consent. Thus, the social construction of the internet is understood here as a process stretched between the pressures for the reproduction of social order and the interests of particular groups. The relation between discourses and individuals is not a priori assumed to be one of complete colonization of the latter by the former; rather, this relation is looked at as a struggle over the definitions of what makes (or defines) the internet. Furthermore, hegemony also suggests that it is not ideology per se that matters, but the ensemble ideology-social groups. In the context of this research, this means that the analysis focuses on the ways in which particular representations of the internet are connected to specific groups. Importantly, hegemony
101 I find Foucault discussion of power more useful than Gramsci's coercion and consent, because Foucault's model does not presuppose the (pre)conscious agreement implied in the concept of'consent'. Ill also recommends that these groups are understood as an on-going struggle, as opposed to homogeneous actors.
The three concepts presented above constitute part of the theoretical model framing this research project. They inform not only my understanding of nationalism and globalization, but also the questions that I am asking around their role in the construction of the internet as an object of discourse. To summarize, articulation recommends a particular understanding of ideologies in terms of the ways in which symbols, ideas, themes, stories etc. are brought together and connected to the interests of specific actors.
Furthermore, Hall's theoretical work on ideology recommends that these articulations can be analyzed by means of critical discourse analysis (discussed in the next chapter). What interpellation brings to this picture is an attention to the relation between ideologies and individuals; this relation is important not only in the context of everyday understandings of the internet, but also in terms of how meaning-making is indissolubly connected to the performance of one's identity, a performance that is itself situated within the subjective position opened up by various discourses. Finally, hegemony proposes an understanding of the social world as permeated by struggles for power, as well as structured by a tendency for the self-reproduction of social order. In the context of this research project, this means that the introduction of a new medium has to be approached primarily as a site of ideological struggle for power between various actors. 112
3.2.4 Discursive Practices
One of the major limitations of Hall's model stems from its approach to ideology in relation to relations of production. Second, in this model power remains understood through the pair domination/ oppression. Last, but not least, I think articulation focuses too much on contingency, neglecting the processes through which the boundaries of ideological representations are being formed and maintained. For these reasons, this thesis rests on Michel Foucault's work on discourses as complementary to the theoretical discussion proposed by Hall. In fact, although Hall has distanced himself from some aspects of Foucault's arguments, the two models remain compatible102. The important
shift that Foucault's work brings along is that from 'ideology' to 'discourse'; this shift brings along a new vocabulary, freed from the Marxist legacy, for understanding the relation between thought, power and material conditions.
For Foucault (1980), this was a necessary conceptual move, given the problems he identified with the notion of ideology:
"The notion of ideology appears to me to be difficult to make use of, for three
reasons. The first is that, like it or not, it always stands in virtual opposition to
something else which is supposed to count as truth [...] The second drawback is
that the concept of ideology refers, I think necessarily, to something of the order
of a subject. Thirdly, ideology stands in a secondary position relative to
something which functions as its infrastructure, as its material, economic
determinant, etc." (Foucault, 1980, p. 118).
l02For example, Hall's discussion of ideologies discovering the subject, rooted in Althusser's interpellation model, is similar to Foucault's discussion of how discursive practices or regimes of truths are forming the subject (Hall & Grossberg, 1986, p. 48). On the relation between Foucault and Althusser (who was an occasional mentor of Foucault at the Ecole normale superiore), see Kelly (2008) and Olssen (2004). 113
In this quote, Foucault outlined the three major critiques of the Marxist legacy of
'ideology'. The first one consisted of a rejection of the premise that there is a 'truth' behind ideology, something that people 'fail' to recognize is problematic. Foucault explained that thinking of ideology in relation to a truth that is accessible, yet hidden from us, is a false problem. Instead, he proposed that the 'truth' itself is "produced within discourses which in themselves are neither true or false" (1980, p. 118). Thus, 'truth' becomes understood as an effect of power, as well as the mechanism through which power is reproduced. In that sense, people have always been "subjected to the production of truth through power and we cannot exercise power except through the production of truth" (Foucault, 1980, p. 93). From this perspective, our knowledge of the world cannot be conceived of independently of the 'regime of truth' that creates, sustains and is created by the power relations of which our 'real social world' consist. While there is no 'truth' or
'reality' beyond discourse, we can still examine this 'regime of truth' - the "system of
ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation
of statements" (Foucault, 1980, p. 133).
The second critique dealt with the assumption that there is a subject who is
subsequently colonized through a 'false consciousness'. For Foucault, the individual "is not a pre-given entity which is seized by the exercise of power. The individual, with his
[sic] identity and characteristics, is the product of a relation of power exercised over bodies, multiplicities, movements, desires, forces" (1980, p. 74). Thus, Foucault re
defined the Althusserian interpellation: ideology not only opened up subject positions,
but power relations formed our identities at the level of our desires and of our bodies.
Importantly, this process through which the 'subject' was born was not only an effect of 114 the discursive level, but also a process of concrete moulding through the material constraints within which we are born'°\
This early model104 of the subject was part of Foucault's reconceptualization of
'power' away from the Marxist domination/ oppression model. 'Power' became understood as a disciplinary mechanism through which society, on the macro level, reproduced itself. Furthermore, power could be analyzed by paying close attention to the discursive level, by means of identifying the dominant modes of categorizing, classifying and ordering the world (Foucault, 1965/1988, 1977/1995, 1978).
Thus, power was not located only in the social relations between identifiable actors (persons or institutions); it had to be understood as a diffused field, a "network of relations" enabled by - and at the same time produced by - our knowledge of the world.
Foucault argued that these networks of power relations permeated all aspects of our everyday life, thus appearing mundane (or natural) to people: they "invest the body, sexuality, the family, kinship, knowledge, technology and so forth" (Foucault 1980, p.
122). Yet, these networks were the fundamental basis upon which State (institutional) power could be enacted. Importantly, Foucault (1977/1995, p. 27) further linked these networks of power to the production and circulation of knowledge; this 'power/ knowledge' ensemble - or the 'regime of truth' discussed above - "determines the forms
103 This view of the subject did not preclude the possibility of creative agency In fact, in a later interview, Foucault argued that his role was "to show people that they are much freer than they feel, that people accept as truth, as evidence, some themes which have been built up at a certain moment during history, and that this so-called evidence can be criticized and destroyed" (in Martin et al, 1988, p 10) Yet, the possibility of creative agency is not the same as the individual possibility of affecting the social structure Or, as Thompson notes, "this critical and contestatory relation to processes of socialization and inculcation does not necessarily disrupt social reproduction" (1990, p 89) 104 In the 1980s, Foucault comes back to the question of the subject and attempts to recuperate the possibility of resistance to discourses and of agency in the constitution of the self (see for example Foucault's discussion of the technologies of the self in Martin et al (1988)) 115 and possible domains of knowledge" (Foucault, 1977/1995, p. 28). The crucial contribution in this case was the possibility to put individual thought aside in favour of a concern with the conditions under which thought could become meaningful in the first place105.
Finally, Foucault's last critique of the Marxist legacy of'ideology' targeted the traditional understanding of ideas as secondary to economic infrastructure (the mode of production). For Foucault, social life was no longer seen as an economically determined historical transformation, but as a rule-bound system. These rules were connected to power arrangements and, as such, investigating them promised to expose the networks of power that (in)form the social body. The mode of production was only one aspect of these power relations, but not their only cause. This made the debates over the primacy of the base over the superstructure futile; instead, Foucault preferred to map these networks of power that he regarded as co-extensive with the social body, by observing the 'logic'
(or the rules) underpinning them. Importantly, this shift did not preclude the possibility of change106. For change was enabled by the very nature of the social dimension: complex, indeterminate, incomplete (particularly in terms of disciplinary power, which, as
Foucault's later work stressed, is always accompanied by forms of resistance) and open to chance (Olssen, 2004).
105 It is in this sense that Foucault argues that 'man', as a modern, Western category is coming to an end (Foucault, 1970, p 345) 106 For example, in the introduction to the Archeology of Knowledge (1972), Foucault vehemently rejected the view of history as a progressive chain of causal determinations on the macro level Instead, he asked how and under what conditions the rules according to which speakers were authorized to speak changed For him, these changes were interruptions or discontinuities in the systems of thought that had to be interrogated in order to understand what 'change' actually refers to We can see the same approach at work throughout all of Foucault's studies, from the History of Sexuality to the seminar on Technologies of the Self 116
The three critiques outlined above constitute the core of the Foucaultian model of power and knowledge. This model informs my definition of nationalism and globalization, as well as the research question. While Hall's articulation enables me to question how meanings and symbols are being put together in the service of power agendas, Foucault's model of discourse adds the idea that the various articulations are not, in some sense, arbitrary or formed out of purely opportunistic reasons. In that sense,
Foucault's model recommends that these articulations remain informed by a logic; or, in other words, they are rule-bound.
3.2.4.1 Discourse
Foucault (1972) understood discourses as systematic sets of rules of speaking about something (a topic). To the extent that these rules became institutionalized, discourses moved into practice (Foucault, 1991a; Paras, 2006; Shapiro, 1981). Thus, discourses were not simply textual or linguistic formations; they necessarily implied an interlinking between what was said and the configuration of power in that society (power/ knowledge)107. Discourses were thus seen as 'regimes of practices': "places where what is said and what is done [...] meet and interconnect" (Foucault, 1991a, p. 75).
As already mentioned, discourses were a), the means through which subjects individualize themselves; and b). the site where power/ knowledge can be interrogated and made visible, via a mapping of the rules according to which discourses are made possible. Thus, discourses were not to be understood as the product of a specific author,
107 The shift from ideology to knowledge had already been operated by Karl Mannheim and continued by the tradition established by Berger and Luckmann's The Social Construction of Reality A Treaties in the Sociology of Knowledge (1966) What Foucault did for this tradition was to recuperate, on a philosophical dimension, the relation between knowledge and power (also Thompson, 1990) 117 but as the conditions under which an author could speak about their topic in an authoritative manner. Anything that could be said was thus to be analyzed in terms of content (which is what Hall's articulation/ representation model captured), or in terms of the rules according to which the statement could be made and evaluated. In this respect,
Hall and Foucault shared an understanding of meaning as polysemic and of language as interlinked with power relations and social structures (Hall, 1997a; Grossberg, 1986;
Morley & Chen, 1996). Meaning was not to be located within the words or within their use, but in the interlinkage between power and language.
Foucault further proposed that to analyze a discourse, one had to focus on how its object was formed. Importantly, this object could not be considered as 'known', but analyzed in terms of the processes through which it was formed, classified, compared, and used - in other words, to bring to light the rules according to which the object of that discourse is constructed (Foucault, 1972, p. 32)108. The research question proposed here has been informed by this model: the internet is investigated as an 'object of discourse', meaning that the interest is in how the internet becomes spoken of, under what conditions this is made possible, who is authorized to do it etc. Yet, as already mentioned, the use of the discourse model here is primarily heuristic: recording a complete list of the rules constituting the internet as an object of discourse is practically impossible109.
l08Michael J Shapiro (1980, p 175) exemplified this as follows you see a man digging a whole, and then you see a young man digging a whole m a sandbox What is it that makes us interpret the first act as 'work' and the second as 'play"7 What we see, as well as the meaning we ascribe it are relational, we select and evaluate in relation to other concepts What informs these selections is the set of rules that Foucault invokes as constitutive of discourses 109 Foucault's (1972) theoretical model of discourse analysis may be a useful heuristic, but it cannot be taken ad litteram This model remains highly abstract, which makes its operationalization difficult However, as the critical discourse analysis tradition discussed m the next section shows, the heuristic power of Foucault's model remains one of its most important contributions 118
However, this model opens up the possibility of critically investigating these social configurations, by focusing on four discursive dimensions:
• the rules according to which a topic or an object becomes spoken spoken of. In
Foucault's own words, these rules pertain to "authorities of emergence,
delimitation and specification" (1972, p. 44).
• the context within which the object can be 'spoken about' (the enunciative
modalities). In this case, the focus is on identifying who has authority to speak
about that object and in what ways this authority is sustained.
• the concepts used in talking about the object.
• the patterned ways in which these concepts are organized. As Foucault argued,
these strategies emerge historically and integrate the previous three dimensions
into something that appears as a coherent discursive field (e.g. medicine,
economy, or, in the case of my argument here, nationalism, globalization or the
discourse around the internet).
As Foucault's own work showed, the examination of these elements necessarily requires the researcher to look for them across various texts110. In this research, I am looking at
'programmatic' policy texts on ICTs and at their newspaper coverage; the 'programmatic' nature of these texts stems from their status as the most visible discursive items which operate "a new way of conceptualizing a problem" (Kendall & Wickham, 2004, p. 144).
Since the model of discourse is not centred on the speaking subject (Paras, 2006), it is particularly suitable for analyzing the role of nationalism and globalization in forming the internet as an object of discourse without having to discuss the role of the specific author
110 This idea rests on the semiotic legacy of the 'intertextuality' of symbols. 119 of a text (in terms of particular values or intentions) and without claiming that it
'determines' what individuals say or think. What I am claiming however, in line with the
Foucaultian model, is that these discourses draw boundaries around what is possible and legitimate to say about the internet111.
Importantly, this model does not claim that discursive formations are contradiction-free or homogeneous (nor does it make any specific claims about the everyday life use of this discourse, beyond the power/knowledge discussion outlined above). Rather, the discursive formation is "a space of multiple dissensions, a set of different oppositions whose levels and roles must be described" (Foucault, 1972, p. 155).
The focus is on the underlying logic of texts, by examining that which "enables thought to operate upon the entities of our world, to put them in order, to divide them into classes, to group them according to names that designate their similarities and their differences"
(Foucault 1970, p. xvii).
3.2.5 From discourse to everyday understanding
The model described above has been criticized primarily on two grounds of relevance here: first, its lack of reflexivity on the role of the researcher; second, its strong objectification of discourse, leading to the 'disappearance' of the speaking subject. In that sense, the discursive model is not able to say much about how people actually reason and make sense of things in everyday life (Grossberg, 1986; Hall, 1997).
'"Again, setting the boundaries of the 'possible' does not mean that these boundaries cannot be transgressed. Foucault emphasized that a boundary or a limit "could not exist if it were absolutely uncrossable and, reciprocally, transgression would be pointless if it merely crossed a limit composed of illusions and shadow" (1977, p. 34). 120
In his later work, Foucault has argued that his treatment of the subject and of power have largely been misunderstood (Foucault, 1980; Martin et al., 1988; Rabinow &
Rose, 2003). When Foucault declared that "I am now interested in how the subject constitutes itself in an active fashion through practices of the self (quoted in Rabinow &
Rose, 2003, p. 34), he was merely trying to explain that his model only 'killed' the subject as an analytic category, but did not deny the possibility of resistance and agency for individuals. However, resistance and agency "are nevertheless not something invented by the individual himself They are models that he finds in his culture and are proposed, suggested, imposed upon him by his culture, his society, and his social group" (Rabinow
& Rose, 2003, p. 34).
In his own work, communication scholar John Thompson (1984, 1990) has equally tried to recuperate this relation between individuals and culture, while preserving the critical focus on power"2. Some of his insights are useful here, particular his recommendation that "to study ideology is primarily to investigate, not a particular type of society, but rather the ways in which meaning (signification) serves to sustain relations ofpower"(1984,p. 35).
Like Hall (and unlike Foucault), Thompson retained an understanding of power as domination and of ideology as the means through which domination is reproduced (1990, p. 56). However, in this case, domination was not reduced to class, thus opening the door for thinking of other types of relations (e.g. gender relation, international relations) in terms of domination (1990, p. 58). Importantly (and echoing Hall's discussion of hegemony), Thompson emphasized that these power relations were an on-going process:
112 Thompson's own work borrowed more from the hermeneutic tradition of interpretation, rather than from the phenomenological work on mundane meaning-making 121 while they did have an institutional dimension, domination required a constant work of maintenance, a work that ultimately came down to "producing and receiving symbolic forms" (1990, p. 58)'".
The symbolic reproduction of institutionalized relations of domination was not, however, 'mirrored' in individual meaning-making. Individuals were not the sum of the institutions and culture within which they have been socialized; furthermore, individuals were asked to occupy various roles and positions within the existing structure, which often resulted in conflicting pressures. Individuals were also creative, and thus able to select and use ideologies for their own purposes. However, this agency had to be understood as embedded within the pre-existing symbolic (as well as material) structure.
The difference, as Thompson argued, was that this pre-existing structure did not have to be understood as homogeneous or static, but as a field of tensions. The relation between individuals and the cultural context remained important because thought was always relational not only to the context, but also to other people's ideas.
From a micro perspective, ideology may no longer seem an useful analytical tool, buried under the weight of individual meaning-making processes and of contingent re- articulations of the pre-existing symbolic universe. However, when approached as
"meaning in the service of power" (Thompson, 1990, p. 7), the concept of ideology re directs the researcher's attention toward the ways in which individual communicative acts feed back into (or challenge) the existing power networks. Importantly, the individual
113 Incidentally, this view is similar to Michael Billig's argument that nationalism (and, for that matter, globalization) requires a constant work of maintenance that takes place in the background of meaning- making process of articulating shared meanings and symbols for specific purposes is not only an act of agency, but also a mechanism through which social order may be reproduced.
3.3 Summary
This chapter has outlined the major theoretical models informing the approach of this thesis. These models share an understanding of meaning-making and power as mutually formative. In the context of this thesis, Hall's discussion of representation, Foucault's discursive practices and Thompson's emphasis on recuperating the workings of ideology in the context of everyday life inform not only the selection of the topic to be investigated, but also recommend specific methods of pursuing it (detailed analysis of texts in relation to the circumstances of their production). As Michael Crotty has described it, a theoretical model is a "scaffolding, not an edifice" (1998, p. 2); in other words, such a model provides a position from which the research topic can be approached, as well as the conceptual tools through which it can be interpreted.
But a theoretical model is also more than that: on an epistemological level, it informs the ways in which the researcher is able to formulate a question about "a real-life issue that needs to be addressed, a problem that needs to be solved, a question that needs to be answered" (Crotty, 1998, p. 13). Thus, this chapter has also outlined the assumptions permeating the formation of the research question itself. Importantly enough, as Chapter 2 has argued, such a research question comes to fill a gap in the existing literature; investigating the internet in terms of its formation as an object of discourse recovers the potential of the Foucaultian model in bringing a novel approach to the study of communication media (and of the internet in particular). Furthermore, the discursive approach provides an alternative to (if not a critique of) the conceptualization of the internet as a transparent medium, with particular effects on social life.
Thus, the approach to the internet undertaken here follows Thompson's three- staged method: first, the institutional context of the problematic under study has to be outlined. Chapter 5 describes the introduction of the internet in Canada and the actors involved in this process. The second step consists of an analysis of the texts that are relevant to the problematic under investigation. Chapter 6, 7 and 8 provide a detailed account of the ways in which the internet is being spoken about in the context of federal policy documents, newspaper articles and everyday conversations. Finally, the last stage, presented in Chapter 9, is that of interpretation, where the discursive analysis is moved beyond the description of the discursive patterns, by looking at how "discourse serves to
sustain relations of domination" (Thompson, 1984, p. 11). 124
Chapter 4: Methodological Aspects
In the previous chapters, I have noted that although communication media are often taken as central to the reproduction of nationalism, very little attention is paid to how a medium comes to be imagined in terms of its social roles and functions. This thesis suggests that nationalism and globalization may, in fact, be important discursive fields through which a new medium is domesticated (Silverstone et al., 1989) within the existing configuration of social forces. Thus, the this thesis aims at mapping some of the collective understandings of the internet within the Canadian context; it questions to what extent the internet, like other media before it, is or appears to be constructed as a 'national media'.
Informed by the theoretical framework outlined in Chapter 3, the research question pursued here can be stated as follows:
• How does the internet become an object of discourse in relation to
nationalism, in the spheres of policy, media and everyday meaning-making in
Canada?
This research question has also been accompanied by a secondary question:
• How do globalization discourses appear in relation to this?
Where:
• The 'internet' is understood as discursively negotiated in terms of its social roles,
features, users and overall impact.
• 'Nationalism' and 'globalization' are understood as discourses that are
simultaneously proposing the nation or the global world as the main principle of 125
organizing social life, and drawing the symbolic boundaries around the concepts
of the 'nation' and the 'global' respectively.
As mentioned in Chapter 3, the discursive model informing these research questions recommends a methodological approach able to bring to light the connection between language and power, by focusing primarily on the analysis of textual products114.
Following Hall's recommendations, the interest here is in bringing to light the articulation between what is being said and "social practices and historical structures" (1978, p. 28).
The analysis rooted in this discursive model is one which necessarily involves both an understanding of the social world that is often rooted in the critical tradition, and an
ongoing process of interpretation through which the 'data' obtained is constantly related back to the existing configuration of power and to the theoretical model through which
this configuration is understood (Thompson, 1984, pp. 126-147).
In the remainder of this chapter, I will outline the particular tool of analysis used
in this research project, namely a form of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). To this purpose, I will start with a brief contextualization of CD A, followed by a description of the specific tool of analysis used in this thesis.
4.1 Critical Discourse Analysis
4.1.1 Background: Discourse Analysis
The research question proposed here is formulated within a social constructionism
approach that regards language as an intersubjective system of meanings through which
we come to name, and therefore to know, reality (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). By naming
114 Where 'texts' are understood in a broad manner, encompassing not only written documents, but also verbal utterances. 126 things, language institutes, to paraphrase Foucault's famous book, an order of things.
Importantly, while language certainly embeds a particular way of thinking, a speaker can usually choose between various ways of 'naming' or describing things; this shifts the emphasis from language to the idea of a 'discourse' (or ways of talking). For, as Foucault has observed, a discourse always relies on a particular way of naming and categorizing things: "there is no similitude and no distinction, even for the wholly untrained eye, that is not the result of a precise operation and of the application of a preliminary criterion"
(1970, p. xix).
Foucault's contribution to the popularization of the concept of'discourse' is part of a wider interest in the question of how language frames reality. Robert de Beaugrande
(2006) outlined the interdisciplinary methodological contours of this question, also known under the umbrella heading of 'discourse analysis' (DA). Among the intellectual traditions shaping DA, Beaugrande included the opening created by Ferdinand de
Saussure's structuralist approach to language (followed by the development of semiotics/ semiology as disciplines); pragmalinguistics, or a linguistic approach centered on what we do with language; functional linguistics, and particularly Michael Halliday's work on the functions of language; and ethnomethodology or the analysis of conversation.
DA remains an 'umbrella' term for a variety of specific methods of analysis that seek to bring to light the work of articulation within different types of texts. One of the reasons for this variety stems from the various intellectual traditions through which researchers come to work with DA; these traditions often infuse one's definition of
'discourse', thus affecting the particular method of analysis (Cheek, 2004, p. 1142). Most of the DA models share three main features: they focus on the organization of texts; they are interested in how sentences connect within the context of the text; and they are concerned with "the relations between linguistic and non-linguistic activity" (Thompson,
1984, p. 99). Thus, DA can generally be placed within one of the following approaches
(Potter et al., 1990)115:
• socio-psychological approaches, emphasizing the psychological processes
through which we understand and construct meaning. For example, the work of
Jonathan Potter, Margaret Wetherell and their colleagues has focused on how
people, in their attempts to construct meaning, also manage their social relations
(Antaki et al, 2002; Billig, 2008; Potter, 1996; Potter et al., 1993).
• continental approaches: namely semiotic and Foucaultian analyses focusing
primarily on the patterns of discursive practices.
• critical approaches: this approach often groups together the critical linguistic
work of Roger Fowler, Gunther Kress, Paul Chilton; the linguistic-oriented work
of Norman Fairclough; the social cognition approach of Teun van Dijk; the
discourse historical approach of Ruth Wodak. The specific interest of CDA is in
exposing the power lines behind discourses with the purpose of highlighting
inequalities or oppression.
• speech act/ conversational analysis: inspired by the work of John Austin, as well
as by efhnomethodology, this type of analysis focuses on micro interactions. It
examines the link between how people talk and what they accomplish through
talk.
115 The authors also include sociology of science as a separate category which I am not discussing here because of its specific emphasis on the discourse of science. The method used in this thesis draws primarily from the tradition of critical approaches; as we shall see next, this tradition draws heavily from and thus overlaps to a great extent with the continental approaches. However, I am also mindful of Thompson's (1984,
1990) suggestion that the study of ideology needs to recuperate the everyday dimension of meaning-making116.1 have found the socio-psychological approaches particularly useful in interpreting the everyday interactions. The influence of this tradition is further outlined in the description of the analysis of the interviews undertaken here.
4.1.2 Critical Discourse Analysis
The work undertaken by the Frankfurt School has brought to the forefront the connections between language, ideology and power; although these connections have been explored from a variety of perspectives, the main theoretical influences in conceptualizing them stem from the works of Jiirgen Habermas in Germany, Stuart Hall and the Birmingham group in the UK, and Michel Foucault in France (Chilton, 2005).
The incorporation of 'ideology' as a legitimate academic concern, as well as the increasing acceptance of openly adopting an agenda aimed at deconstructing or challenging oppression contributed to the development of a particular form of discourse analysis, namely CDA (Blommaert & Bulcaen, 2000; Chilton, 2005; Fairclough, 2001;
Wodak & Meyer, 2009, van Dijk, 2003).
'"' Thompson argued that there is a lot to be learned from speech acts/ conversation analysis in terms of analyzing micro interactions; however, attention to the details of the speech act (grammatical composition, syntactic choice, role turns etc.) has to be supplemented with an interpretation of the "potential ideological character - that is, its character as a symbolic form which serves, in these circumstances, to sustain an assymmetrical power relation of power [...]" (1990, p. 302). 129
Figure 1 sketches an outline of CDA in terms of its intellectual heritage and specific interests:
THEORETICAL ORIGINS Frankfurt School: Critical thrust Antonio Gramsci, Stuart Hall: Ideology and hegemony Michel Foucault: Knolwedge/power, discourse Pierre Bourdieu: Habitus Van Dijk's social I cognitivemodel CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS is closer in interest to Norman Ruth Teun A. Discursive Fairelough Wodak van Dijk Psychology approaches
LINGUISTIC & DISCOURSE DISCURSIVE PSYCHOLOGY ANALYSIS * Interest in psychological * Focus on grammatical mechanisms aspects * Micro approaches * Various schools with many * Borrows from influences (Ferdinand de ethnomethodology and Saussure, Noam Chomsky, conversation analysis John Lakoffetc.) * CDA traces its origin to a Jonathan Potter, Derek particular school, Critical Edwards, Michael Billig, Linguistics (Michael Halliday, Charles Antaki (Loughborough Roger Fowler) University). Margaret V\fetherell.
Figure 1: Intellectual Heritage of Critical Discourse Analysis
As a methodology, CDA recommends a constant shift in interpretation from texts to social structures, embracing the argument that critical studies "should be oriented towards critiquing and changing society, in contrast to traditional theory oriented solely to understanding or explaining it" (Wodak & Meyer, 2009, p. 6)"7.
117 This argument has been proposed by Max Horkheimer in his famous article "Traditional and Critical Theory (1973/1982). 130
4.1.3 Principles ofCDA
CDA aims at making visible the ways in which language "functions in constituting and transmitting knowledge, in organizing social institutions or in exercising power" (Wodak
& Meyer, 2009, p. 7). As van Dijk further explained, CDA is "a critical perspective, position or attitude" (2009, p. 62). There are thus various ways in which the actual analysis of texts can being done: for instance, researchers can choose between different conceptual toolboxes such as grammatical analysis, semiotic analysis, rhetorical analysis etc. to examine the text. Nevertheless, all of these specific methods are informed by the same principles, discussed below:
• CDA takes discourse "as socially constitutive as well as socially conditioned"
(Blommaert & Bulcaen, 2000, p. 448). For me, this means that the relation
between the discursive and the non-discursive dimensions is one of mutual
constitution and conditioning. Thus, CDA recommends we focus on the
interweaving between the two dimensions, both in terms of the analysis of data
and in terms of the interpretation process. The next chapter will outline the non-
discursive context of this specific research question.
• CDA defines discourse on three levels"8: text (linguistic organization), discursive
practice (discourse as produced/ consumed in a social context), and social practice
(the ideological and hegemonical processes to which the discourse is part)
118 The Foucaultian model of'discourse', which is used in this thesis, has been discussed at length in Chapter 3. Useful reviews of the intellectual context of'discourse' are provided by Beaugrand (2006); Potter et al. (1990); Threadgold (2003); Thompson (1984, particularly chapter 7); Wodak and Meyer (2009). 131
(Bloomaert & Bulcaen, 2000, pp. 448-9). This means that the interpretation of a
text needs to move from its mechanics (vocabulary, grammar, syntax, figures of
speech etc.) to social configurations. This move necessarily involves an
interpretation based on the theoretical framework that the analysis espouses. It is
precisely this interpretive legwork that is also the most problematic, particularly
when the interpretation is not clear enough, properly grounded in a theoretical
model or when the theoretical model itself is problematic (Antaki et al., 2003;
Flowerdew, 1999; Thompson, 1990).
• CDA takes an interest in the relation between macro and micro levels of analysis
(van Dijk, 2003). From an analytical perspective, the interesting question facing
the researcher is how the phenomena observed on the macro level connect to
everyday interactions. This is a core question of this research, informing the
selection of data, and guiding the interpretation process.
Informed by these principles, CDA methods often consist of detailed descriptions of the text, which are subsequently packaged into explanations. For example, texts can be analyzed in terms of grammatical structure, vocabulary, rhetorics, pragmatics, arguments etc. (van Dijk, 2006a). These elements are often discussed in relation to their contexts, which can range from the context of the sentence to the circumstances of the production of the text. These principles have informed the method of analysis presented next. 132
4.1.4 Limitations of CD A
CDA is not without critics and limitations (e.g. Antaki et al., 2003; Bloomaert &
Bulcaen, 2000; Chilton, 2005; Flowerdew, 1999; Widdowson, 2000). A major critique brought from a theoretical perspective is that the concepts and models so dear to CDA scholars remain fuzzy and unclear (Bloomaert & Bulcaen, 2000, p. 455). Exactly what is meant by 'discourse', 'ideology', 'practice' or 'structure'? Without dismissing this critique, I think that to a certain extent, any social science concept or theoretical model ends up being tautological. Espousing a certain vocabulary has to do with the politics of academic research: it places the researcher within a scholastic tradition from which she draws support. In fact, one of the frequent charges brought to CDA is its politically motivated agenda.
However, since the ultimate goal of CDA is that of interpreting the results of an analysis by reflexively connecting them to their socio-political contexts, spelling out the political agenda espoused by the researcher, as well as the theoretical framework behind the particular CDA method of analysis are extremely important, as they become part of the interpretive process. In this respect, an on-going reflexivity on the part of the researcher is an integral part of doing CDA. I have tried to address this critique in
Chapter 3 which provides not only a detailed account of the theoretical framework
informing this project, but also of my personal assumptions about the nature of discourses
and their role in communicative interactions.
CDA has also been criticized in terms of its ability to shed light onto meaning- making processes. For example, Chilton argued that while CDA does a good descriptive job, it still does not answer why certain types of thinking - racist, nationalist etc. - remain 133 persistent and powerful (2005, p. 24). To communication scholars, this critique is quite familiar: exposing how a media representation is constructed does not say much about how it is interpreted by audiences119. The question of the relation between macro patterns and micro interaction remains an open one; based on the particular case analyzed here, this thesis explores several interpretations of this relation in Chapter 9. When it comes to the scope of these interpretations, I am following Williams' recommendation that
"generalizations are legitimate if they are treated and made explicitly as ... moderatum generalizations", namely recognizing that they are limited (Williams, 2002, p. 131).
Another critique questions whether analyzing the linguistic level of a text can actually tell anything about ideologies or social structures (e.g. Widdowson, 2000). The charge here is that this form of analysis ignores the fact that a text is an organic whole, created for the purpose of being consumed. Both the internal 'coherence' of the text and the pragmatics of its production/ consumption are allegedly bracketed by CDA; instead, the analyst isolates those instances that suit her own political goal. When looking at the linguistic level of a text, Widdowson argues, the only thing we can say for sure is "that certain selected formal features occur with a certain frequency. But it is not a fact that they are an index of ideological significance" (2000, p. 15).
In my opinion, this critique is not entirely fair. As already discussed, many CDA scholars consider a text in its three dimensions - as an actual text, as a discursive practice and a social practice. In my view, the source of this critique stems from an uneasiness with the political motivation and interpretive work within CDA (also Flowerdew, 1999).
This critique however is important because it brings us back to the debate between
119 See particularly the work of the Birmingham Centre for Cultural Studies discussed in Chapter 2 134 positivist and interpretivist epistemologies (and their consequent ethical recommendations for scientific research): should social science research seek to emulate the alleged objectivity of scientific experiments, by excluding the researcher's perspective as well as any other social phenomena which cannot be properly quantified or directly observed?120
In this project, I am not interested in providing a model that can predict how a new medium will be socially constructed. Instead, I am proposing a particular form of interpretation, based on an analysis informed by the theoretical framework presented in
Chapter 3. Although the interpretation may propose 'causes', this causality is often questioned by the analyst. Wickham and Kendall (2007) identify this as one of the weak points of CDA, warning that discourse analysts need to be very careful in generalizing about 'causal relations' from the 'object-being-explained'. Analysts should reflexively engage with their own beliefs and political motivations when establishing 'causal relations' or when generalizing. My approach recognizes that the interpretation/ generalizations proposed here rest upon a theoretical model, serving a particular political agenda characterized primarily by a resistance to nationalism and globalization discourses. The claim however is that this interpretation may provide a new account of the problematic, unveiling new issues and offering new heuristic devices for future interpretations.
This perspective is not at all singular within the landscape of CDA-informed work. As Flowerdew summarized, "(1) CDA does not deal with 'facts'; (2) CDA is
120 For reasons of expediency, I cannot engage with this debate here I have however provided an extended account of my own understanding of this debate in an analysis of the legitimacy of autoethnography as an academic method (see Dumitnca, 2010) For a more established review of this debate, see Denzin and Lincoln (2002), Seale and Silverman (1997) 135 reflexive; (3) CDA is open to multiple readings; (4) CDA must be plausible; (5) CDA is subject to the same limitations of linguistic communication as any other discipline"
(1999, p. 1090). In designing the methodological tool outlined next, I have kept in mind not only Flowerdew's recommendations, but also the potential shortfalls of discourse analysis (Antaki et al., 2003). These are presented next as means of strengthening the argument of this thesis, as well as possible criteria for evaluating it:
• Avoid under-analysis through summary: CDA should not merely summarize the
data, but also interpret it. As Antaki et al (2003) argued, the summary may
"prepare the way for the analysis, but it does not provide it" (Under-Analysis
section, para. 5).
• Avoid taking sides: Not every interpretation goes, and the analyst should avoid
offering her own values and judgements as a part of the analysis. However, it is
important to point out that Antaki et al. make these recommendations about
discourse analysis. The difference between DA and CDA is precisely the
commitment of the latter to a political goal. Nevertheless, the advice is useful in
reminding the analyst that regardless of her political goals, these should be
reflexively interrogated in the context of the analysis.
• Avoid over-quotation or isolated quotation: The analyst should not merely quote
from the text, without explaining why and how the quote is important in the
analysis. Furthermore, the analyst should be mindful of the extent to which the
selected quotes are representative of the text or not.
• Avoid the circular discovery of discourses and mental constructs: CDA rests on
the assumption that a unit of text is in a dialectic relation with wider discourses/ 136
ideologies. The analyst may put together units of text to show how they draw
from particular discourses. But then the analyst ends up explaining the units in
terms of the ideologies that informed their selection in the first place. While this
circularity is complex and to a certain extent hard to avoid (after all, theoretical
constructs become, eventually, tautological), Antaki et al. (2003) do offer some
advice: for instance, the analyst could look at how particular discourses/
ideologies are used in the selected unit within the wider context of the text; the
analyst could also consider if the evidence for something extends beyond the
specific quote selected.
• Avoid false surveys: This refers to the danger of generalization from a given
sample. This recommendation is particularly important in the context of the
interviews undertaken here and will be further discussed below.
• Avoid taking the recognition of linguistic features for the actual analysis: Simply
spotting the rhetorical procedures outlined by other CDA scholars is not analysis.
"Original analysis should seek to show how established discursive devices are
used, in new sets of material, to manage the speakers' interactional business. What
is required is to show what the feature does, how it is used, what it is used to do,
how it is handled sequentially and rhetorically, and so on" (Antaki et al., 2003,
Under-Analysis section, para. 4).
The particular method of analysis used here will be described next. Importantly, this method has been informed by the Foucaultian framing of the research question; as such, the analysis tool has been designed with an interest in general conditions under which we come to speak of the internet. 137
4.2 The Method of Analysis
To address the research question outlined in the beginning of this chapter, I have focused on the discursive construction of the internet in the context of three social spheres121: policy, media and everyday life. I have opted for these three spheres because the existing literature suggests a strong relationship to nationalism and globalization: for instance, both policy and media can be understood as sites where the 'national' and the 'global' as problematics are discussed and negotiated, mutually shaping each other The significance of the link between nationalism, the nation-state and the policy environment in the
Canadian context has already been mentioned: traditionally, the negotiation of communication media in the sphere of policy has relied on the discourse of Canadian
(cultural) nationalism. This link will be further explored in the next chapter. For now, policy can be understood as the site where nationalist rhetoric is articulated with specific power agendas; similarly, media can be understood as the site where this crystallization is debated. I have focused on the specific case of newspapers, because they remain an central institution in the representation of the social world.
Before describing the data and the tool of analysis, it is important to point out that
I could not treat the interviews in the same way as the policy and newspaper texts. While policy and media are regulators of social life and have an institutionalized dimension,
121 In the introductory chapter, I have outlined my reasons for selecting the Canadian context as a suitable case for analyzing the social construction of the internet in relation to nationalism and globalization discourses While J am aware that limiting the analysis to a particular national context may be problematic (e g Appaduiai, 1996, 2000, actor-network or network analysis approaches), I have argued that the nation- state remains a crucial site where new media are regulated and further developed Thus, although a network approach might have resulted in a different set of data, as well as in a different interpretation of the role of discourses in the social construction of the internet, from the perspective of the theoretical framework espoused here, a country-based context remains suitable for the investigation of the proposed research question 138 everyday conversations are micro-interactions in which the understanding of the internet is being negotiated for contingent purposes. Such interactions provide an insight into how people may make sense of things; however, given the limitations of the interviewed sample, these interviews cannot be considered as representative of the general landscape, in the same way as the policy and media texts are. This has resulted in slightly different
(yet, as I will argue next, compatible) tools of analysis.
4.2.1 Data
Within the spheres of policy and newspapers, the selection of data was done so as to include representative cases. Thus, I have opted for the policy documents on the internet produced by the Canadian federal government. These documents constitute the corpus of official texts outlining the vision, strategy and specific recommendations of the Canadian government. In the sphere of newspapers, I have selected the articles covering these federal policy documents; the articles were identified by searching the Canadian
Newsstand database using a set of keywords (listed in Appendix A). An overview of these texts is presented in Table 1 below (for a complete list of all the analyzed articles, see Appendix A). Importantly, these texts can be understood as representative for the ways in which the internet has been socially constructed through policy.
In the case of everyday life conversations, I have relied on a convenience sample of 29 individuals who self-identified as both internet users and Canadians. Although this convenience sample included interviewees in four different geographical locations
(chosen because of their importance as the metropolitan areas in Canada: Calgary,
Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver), it remained formed primarily through availability and 139 self-selection (Berg, 2007, p. 43)122. All interviewees were young (20s to 40s), urban, with or working toward the completion of higher education degrees (with one exception); they shared a keen (professional or personal) interest in ICTs. Within this sample of everyday meaning-making processes, the occurrence of repetitive themes and ideas was taken as a token of reaching a level of saturation (i.e. data become repetitive (Baxter &
Babbie, 2004, p. 319)) sufficient to enable the researcher to proceed with the analysis.
Table 1: List of data for policy documents, newspaper articles and interviews.
Policy 7 policy reports: Documents 1994 Government Vision (Industry Canada, 1994); 1995 IHAC Report (IHAC, 1995); 1995 CRTC Competition Report (CRTC, 1995); 1996 Government Response to IHAC report (Industry Canada, 1996); 1997 IHAC Report (IHAC, 1997); 1997 Digitization Report (Industry Canada, 1997); 2001 Broadband Report (Industry Canada, 2011). Newspaper 136 newspaper articles (for a full list of all the articles, see Appendix A): articles 20 articles covering the 1994 Government Strategy; 28 articles covering the 1995 CRTC Competition Report; 52 articles covering the 1995 IHAC Report, the 1996 Government Response and the 1997 IHAC Report. 123 __ _ 36 articles covering the 2001 NBTF Report . Interviews I 29 interviews in four locations: Calgary, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver: 6 male, 23 female; Age groups: 20s (22 participants), 30s (5 participants), 40s (2 participants); Profession: undergraduate (12, out of which two were also consultants, one a technical writer, and one self-identified as a professional), graduate student (14, out of which one was also a librarian, one a computer consultant), faculty staff (1), stay at home mom (1), radio editor (1).
4.2.2 The method of analysis for policy and newspaper texts
In designing the analysis tool for policy and media texts, I have followed Fairclough's advice that "closer attention to texts sometimes helps to give firmer grounding to the
122 Although convenience samples are widely relied upon, their limitations are problematic, particularly in terms of the ability to generalized based on them (Berg, 2007). However, given the approach of this thesis, I think a convenience sample remains useful: this thesis is not interested in presenting a map of what people think. It is more interested in examining how social meaning is negotiated within and across social spheres. As I will explain next, the analysis of the interviews paid attention to the relation between the speaker's position and the construction of the internet put forward. Of course, different demographics may relate to nationalism and globalization discourses in different ways; in that sense, the comparison with other demographics may consitute a line of future research. l23No articles were found for the 1997 Digitization Report. 140 conclusions arrived at without it" (1994, p. 194; also Wodak & Meyer, 2009). However, within the context of the research question, the analysis was interested primarily in the relations established between concepts; these relations were subsequently interrogated from the perspective of the Foucaultian model for the 'rules' which legitimized them124.
Thus, I have tried to take into consideration not only the grammatical, semantic and argumentative levels of a text, but also its performative aspect. The texts outlined in
Table 1 have been scrutinized for their linguistic composition (vocabulary, grammar, syntax, figures of speech), for their argumentative structures, for the mechanisms through which these choices (linguistic and argumentative) were legitimized and for their specific function in relation to their intended audiences.
To understand how the internet becomes an object of discourse and the role of nationalism and globalization play in this process, the focus of the analysis was on how the relations between the three main concepts - internet, nation and globalization - was formulated and subsequently proposed to readers. As Michael Halliday (1985) has shown, whenever we speak, we select from various linguistic resources; speaking about something involves different types of choices (e.g. words, topics, angles). Yet, these choices are always drawing from both cultural models and ideological frames125.
124 As explained in Chapter 3, Foucault's model remains a heuristic device here. Discourses are not the clear-cut systems of rules; rather, as Gee (1999, p. 21) suggests, discourses have no clear-cut boundaries, they are constantly re-adjusting to the circumstances, and involve a relation of "complicity and contestation" with other discourses (Gee, 1999, p. 22). As such, discourses can be understood in terms of a set of loosely defined 'rules' (in)forming their object. 125 Paul Gee (2008) exemplifies this by looking at two phrases: 'good English' and 'correct English'. The composition and use of such phrases may be related to a class-based understanding of language as good/ high-class versus bad/ low-class. The argument here is that behind the choices informing the conceptual relation lies a model or a worldview in relation to which these phrases become meaningful. Furthermore, the question of whether we accept this meaning or not adds yet another layer to meaning-making processes. 141
Given the complexity and volume of the data, I had to reduce it in order to make it manageable. The reduction consisted of selecting the sentences/ phrases in the texts where the three concepts of interest (as well as their proxies, outlined in Table 2 below)126 occurred. This was accomplished with the help of a textual analysis software127. To preserve the context for the analysis of conceptual relations, I have tried to select complete sentences or phrases, which I have called the basic units of analysis. In the next chapters, the quotes offered as examples for particular types of conceptual relations have been selected from the general pool of units of analysis. All of the units have been analyzed, as per the discussion below, in terms of the conceptual relations that they proposed. The relations that worked as the principle of selection of textual units can be represented as follows:
• (nation + internet);
• [(nation+internet) + global]128.
Table 2: List of proxies for the main concepts
Internet I Nation j Global Infrastructure: I Canad*, nation*, we , shared/ i global*, international*, world, internet, network (network of networks, computer I common (where , worldwide, 'Other countries', networks), Highway (Information Highway), | we/shared/common explicitly ' 'foreign governments'. (information and communication) system, applications , referred to we, the nation), (technical): information/ computer/ digital/ new/ English, French/Francophone, electronic/ advanced technolog*, software, Aboriginal. applications, multimedia, digit*, standards, as well as I specific applications (proper nouns); alphanumeric text; i (I have ignored the cases where
broadband. t Canad* or nation* were part of a | proper noun indicating an Content - content: content (when it refers to online/ ! institution or a report)
126 This list was itself based on a word count of the first three policy documents indicated in Table 1 above. In the case of nationalism, the selection was also informed by the scholastic work on the tropes of Canadian nationalism. In the case of the internet, a broader understanding of the concept including not only the technical infrastructure, but also the content and use practices was used (Flew 2008). 127 Weft QDA (available at http://www.pressure.to/qda/). 128 In other words, I have excluded all the sentences where these relations were not present. On a different note, the breakdown of documents into units for further analysis has also created a referencing problem. All textual units in a report or in the news covering that report were marked, starting with 1. In the analysis chapter, I have made a reference to the number of the analysis unit, e.g. 1995 IHAC report, U12. 142
electronic/ multimedia content; instances where 'content' could not be directly linked to internet but could pertain to general cultural industries content were excluded), digit* (where it refers to content), information (where it referes to online information)/
Use- technological/ digital revolution, new/ knowledge/information economy, information society.
Once the units selected, I have proceeded to the second stage of the analysis, where the six characteristics of the conceptual relations were recorded:
• Topic of each unit;
• Strength of the conceptual relation (implicit, explicit, emphasized);
• Tone of the conceptual relation (negative, positive, neutral);
• Grammatical and logical aspects of the relation (what type of relation is being
established between the main concepts);
• Discursive strategies: the performative aspect of the relation - nomination,
predication, argumentation, legitimation'29.
• Linguistic means: grammatical arrangements and figures of speech.
The choice of these characteristics has been informed by two different methods of analysis. In her own, Ruth Wodak has looked primarily at the discursive construction of national identities. In a methodological article, Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer (2009, p.
29) outline the four elements deemed as crucial to any CDA analysis: the topic under discussion, the discursive strategy (i.e. the different things that a sentence is doing - nomination, predication, argumentation, perspectivisation); the linguistic means (i.e.
129 These strategies, informed primarily by the detailed linguistic studies of Michael Halliday, refer to how something is named/ categorized (nomination), evaluated through the attribution of traits (predication), explained using specific themes or ideas (argumentation) and made acceptable (legitimation) (see Wodak & Meyer, 2009). 143 grammatical arrangement or figures of speech) through which these strategies are realized; and the way in which these linguistic means are applied in specific contexts.
The second method that has influenced the design of this particular tool borrows from Kathleen Carley's relational analysis model (Carley, 1986, 1993; Carley &
Palmquist, 1992). Although Carley's work is closer to linguistic analysis than my own, I have found her approach useful because it emphasizes the relational aspects of concepts.
As she notes, "a social definition for a particular concept would be a network of facts focused on that concept" (Carley, 1986, p. 148). She further recommends that conceptual relations can be examined on four dimensions:
• strength: the degree of emphasis placed on the relation between concepts (Carley,
1993). The way in which we choose to relate different nouns has been seen as
indicative of the social context within which meaning-making takes place
(Halliday, 1985)130. In this analysis, the strength of a conceptual relation was
defined as the emphasis placed on the relation: is the relation implicit, explicit or
emphasized? The difference between implicit and explicit relations was further
defined in terms of whether the concepts in question were linked in a direct
relation or not131.
Ij0 For example, there are various degrees of emphasis in these relations "internet and nation", "national internet", "the nation's internet" However, the relations between concepts are also of a logical nature, in this case, there are also degrees of strength between them For example "internet and nation" is a list of elements, while "the internet impacts the nation" refers to a relation of causality m For example, the sentence "The internet is destroying geographical distance and borders, creating new arenas of jurisdiction It is imperative that Canada addresses this new reality" establishes a conceptual relation between 'internet' and 'Canada', but the relation is not explicitly stated This relation can be rendered as follows A has effects, B is an object of these effects, therefore B must act An explicit relation would have been formulated differently "The internet destroys geographical distance and the borders of Canada" In this case, the relation can be rendered as A produces effects on B Finally, the emphasis was defined as cases when an explicit relation was further marked, whether through a genitive or through additional descriptions in the text (e g "The internet destroys geographical distance and the borders of Canada This act of destruction poses crucial implications to Canada's survival) 144
• sign: involves an evaluation of the relation as positive, negative or neutral.
Example: "A will threaten B", the relation between A and B is a negative one,
indicated in the choice of the verb 'threaten'. The sign of a relation is contextual:
for example, "A goes to B" is a positive relation; and "A does not go to B" is
negative (Carley & Palmquist, 1992, p. 613). In this thesis, I have opted to talk
about 'tone' (rather than 'sign') as I find this label clearer.
• direction: assessing which concept has priority over the other. The different types
of direction may include: A implies B; A comes before B; If A is true, then B is
true; A qualifies B (Carley, 1993, p. 96). In practice however, assessing
directionality is particularly difficult; this is why I have chosen to omit this
dimension from my own analysis.
• meaning: evaluating the meaning of the relationship. What is the relationship
doing? Is it defining or simply stating something? Does it have a temporal nature?
Is it pointing to a causal relation? etc.
Once these textual units have been analyzed based on the features described above, the last stage of the analysis consisted of a critical interpretation of the results. In this stage, I went back to the Foucaultian model, questioning the role of the conceptual relations in terms of delimiting the internet as an object of discourse. Each conceptual relation was thus analyzed with three questions in mind:
• How are the concepts brought together in the selected texts?
• What is the meaning of this relation?
• What discourse (worldview or shared knowledge) do they invoke? As a result of this last stage of analysis, the relations established between the concepts were grouped into four categories. Chapters 6 and 7 present an overview of these conceptual relations in the context of policy documents and newspaper articles. In line with the CDA principles described above, the presentation of these relations is at the same time a form of interpretation. Thus, in these chapters, I am trying to bring to light the relation between the reliance on particular types of conceptual relations and the networks of power informing them.
4.2.3 The method of analysis for the interviews
As data, the interviews are of a different nature than the policy documents and the newspaper articles. First, the data examined in these two spheres describes the same events and has been produced around the same time. By contrast, the interviews were conducted almost seven years after the last policy document was produced. As such, the interviews were not part of the same events/ contexts as the reports or the newspaper articles. Second, if the data previously examined can be understood as macro discourses132, the interviews are instances of micro interactions. Macro discourses are invoked and relied upon in the construction of micro interactions, and in this process they are being re-articulated, changed or transformed by participants; however, the macro significance of these changes is hard to assess. Last, but not least, the agenda of these interactions has been controlled by the researcher: the conceptual relations brought into discussion were (initially) set by the interview questions; respondents were subsequently asked to elaborate upon them (see also Cicourel in Witzel & Mey, 2004).
132 That is, these documents are not produced by particular authors, but by institutions. 146
All of these however do not make the interviews irrelevant; rather, their value stems from considering them as positioned explorations in the context of everyday life that may be able to shed light on how ideology affects the process of making sense of things. To a certain extent, the addition of the interviews may in fact address one of the major critiques to CD A outlined above - that of not being able to say anything about how people actually make sense of macro representations. The interviews are approached here following the advice provided by Holstein and Gubrium (1999) as a instances of social interaction and representation. As these authors point out, "meaning is not merely elicited by apt questioning, nor simply transported through respondent replies; it is actively and communicatively assembled in the interview encounter" (Holstein &
Gubrium, 1999, p. 106; also Schostak, 2005). Through the interviews, we get a glimpse into how we rely on ideologies to make sense of the world, by understanding people and objects through normative taxonomies'33. For, as Foucault points out, it is through classification that we 'order' the world around us, thus making it meaningful; it is precisely these classifications that we must deconstruct by asking : "according to what grid of identities, similitudes, analogies, have we become accustomed to sort out so many different and similar things?" (1966, p. xix). Thus, it is not the case that the interviews are able to 'reveal' what people actually think (they are not maps of the existing 'repositories of knowledge' (Holstein & Gubrium, 1999, p. 106)). Instead, the focus is on how we put things together to make sense of the internet.
133 The overlap of description and evaluation has been discussed in various contexts. From a political science perspective, Michael J. Shapiro argued that any description is an interpretation, and that meaning "depends on the rules or norms which constitute the meaning of such concepts" (1991, p. 43). Similarly, from a systemic-functional linguistic perspective, Martin and Rose (2007) noted that our descriptions involve classifications that are inscribed with judgement. 147
The interviews are thus regarded as a conversational (yet structured by the very nature of the encounter) inquiries into the mundane way in which we imagine the internet and its relation to the Canadian nation. Of course, this imaginary is largely dependent upon the specific demographic characteristics of my sample (young, educated, urban and to a large extent digital natives)114. However, the epistemological position from which these interviews were approached is one rooted in the idea that our meaning-making processes are transformative. As Holstein and Gubrium point out, in the interpretivist approach to interviews, the discussion of topics that are not part of everyday conversations is a way of "gain[ing] purchase on interpretive practices related to matters that may not be casually topical, yet which are socially relevant. By inciting narrative production, the interviewer may provoke interpretive developments that might emerge too rarely to be effectively captured 'in their natural habitat', so to speak" (1999, pp. 118-
119).
Furthermore, during the interview process, I have emphasized the exploratory nature of the questions, asking my respondents to talk about how they imagine the internet. The design of the interviews was thus informed by the assumption that the relation between nationalism and technology is not a mundane topic of reflection or conversation. Yet, even though my particular research agenda has driven the conversation that respondents and I often co-constructed, the structure of the encounter (the interview) is not a determinant of responses: the questions "do not tell respondents what to say, but
1341 would argue that this group of people often introduces the internet to their families and friends, explaining why this technology matters and how it should be used Even though the statistical data on Canadian internet use shows that almost 80% of Canadians are now online, with the internet - as with other new media technology - it is mostly the high-income, educated people who are the early adopters (see Statistics Canada, 2008, but also Bakardjieva, 2005) 148 offers them pertinent ways of conceptualizing issues and making connections - that is, suggests possible horizons of meaning and narrative linkages that coalesce into the emerging responses" (Holstein & Gubrium, 1999, p. 118). As we will see in the analysis chapter, the interviewees' rejection of my attempts to link national identity to the internet, or their rejection of the discourse of nationalism in general, are important aspects of what
Patrice Flichy (2007) has called the 'internet imaginaire'. In analyzing these interviews, we can question how people draw from wider discourses, how they re-articulate the conceptual relations proposed by these discourses and how they make use of them in their identity performances.
4.2.3.1 The interview sample
As outlined in Table 1 above, the interview sample135 consisted of 29 interviewees. A demographic picture of the interviewees (including their ethnic/ national self- identification, as this dimension is relevant for the analysis) is presented in Table 3. All respondents were recruited via email, using various lists, blogs and personal contacts in higher education settings. The recruitment email indicated that I am looking for respondents who self-identify as Canadians, have lived in Canada for the past five years and consider themselves as internet users136. One interviewee (Diane) responded to an email sent to bloggers explicitly identifying themselves as living in one of the four urban centres listed above. The rest of the interviewees responded to the call for participants
135 The interviews received ethical clearance from the University of Calgary's Conjoint Research Ethics Board (file# 5356). The interview followed an ethics protocol that was made known to the interviewees and which included anonymizing all respondents (the names used in this thesis are the pseudonyms that the respondents have chosen for themselves). ,36The assumption was that this provides a sufficient timeframe for respondents to become immersed in their local contexts and to rely on the symbolic universes associated with these contexts. 149 after someone in their respective departments circulated my email. The interviews were subsequently held in an office space or in a coffee shop.
Table 3: Overview of the interviewees
Name [Gender JAge Location Profession Identification Samantha IF 28 Calgary Graduate Student Canadian/ conditional Quebecos Diane Calgary Stay home mom Canadian Deb Calgary l^sceducaJfon Canadian John 20s Calgary Graduate Student Newfoundland, Canadian Joe 12ST [Calgary^ GjadUatej^fadent, Canadian, Finish mother , Nina 30 Calgary Graduate Student Canadian, graduate student [Calgary Graduate Student Mexican and Canadian James M Calgary Student Canadian Graduate Student/ Gene M 40s Calgary Technical Support North American, Canadian, English ^ Canadian/Anglophone, multiple Canadian Yvette IF 30s Montreal Graduate Student 'generations Dyer JF 28 [Montreal Student/Consultant [Canadian, Fipino^arents^AsJanCafKdHnj Sheila F 20_ Vancouver Student French-born, Canadian-raised Vietnamese Shannon [22 [Vancouver Student (Canadian , ._ _i Sally F 30s [Vancouver Radio producer Canadian, multiple Canadian generations , Ruby _H F 20 fVancouver Student _ Canadian SuzyS F 20 'Vancouver Student Canadian Student/ technical Colleen F 20 [Vancouver writer [Canadian, Sw iss citizenship Star F 23 Vancouver Student Canadian Efe [F 30 ]vancotiver Student {Canadian with a mixed lineage Julie F 30s iToronto Student Quebecois - Canadian, Francophone md Kathleen 20s {Toronto Graduate Student [Canadian 2"1 generation, Irish citizenship ^ TorontoStu mid dent M 20s Toronto Graduate Student ,Dual citizen UK and Canada Graduate student/ [ AyeryA 127 (Toronto librarian Canadian Sockmonke rrud F r- - , - 20s Toronto Graduate Student Canadian ]28 ^Toronto Graduate Student (Canadian _ _ ^ j 1 Horatio (M Student/ Taiw an-born, three citizenships - Taw an, 28 Toronto professional Costa Rica, Canada ^ydney F md 20s Toronto |GraduateStudent JDual citeenshipUS^andCanada^ lEmily IF mid Dora 20s Toronto Graduate Student Canadian from Canadian parents Alyse 124 iToronto [Student Canadian from Canadian parents 150
4.2.3.2 The questionnaire
The interview questions placed the emphasis on how articulations between concepts can be made. Three of the four conceptual relations identified in the analysis of policy and newspaper texts were further elaborated upon by the interviewees. The interviews were in-depth and semi-structured, lasting between 30 minutes (the shortest) to lh30 minutes
(the longest). They started with a brief description of the research project and obtaining ethics consent. This introduction already signalled to participants that we will be discussing not only their internet use, but also their national identification, explaining that we will explore the ways in which these two concepts can be brought together. The interview was based on the following sets of questions (always asked in this particular order):
• Internet use: questions in this group explored the interviewee's daily use of the
internet, as well as the ways in which the interviewee thought of the internet (Ql:
How do you use the internet?; Q2: How do you see the internet/ What does the
internet mean to you/ What values you associate with the internet?). Throughout
the interview, I always came back to what participants indicated as their use
pattern. If the interviewee would explicitly link their use to anything pertaining to
'Canada' or 'Canadian', I further probed that aspect with questions such as 'What
does it mean that the content is Canadian', or 'Why do you prefer the Canadian
sources?' or 'Why does it matter to you that this is a Canadian site/ content?'.
• National identification: questions in this group explored the interviewee's
identification in relation to the nation (Q3: What is your national identification?).
Whenever the interviewer wanted to explore other identifications - such as a 151
professional one, or an ethnic or racial one - I have followed up with more
questions on the relation between these identifications and the national dimension.
A series of follow-up questions were also asked; these questions were meant to
clarify what the respondent meant by their chosen identity categories. Again,
during the interview, I often came back to what respondents indicated they regard
as a 'nation' or 'being Canadian'.
• National identity in internet use: in this section, I have asked the interviewees to
think about moments in their internet use when national identity would come into
play (Q4: When you are online, are there any moments when you are reminded of
your national identity?/ or/ What things that you encounter online remind you of
your national identity?). When needed, I went back to the interviewee's use of the
internet and national identification to provide prompts. Follow-up questions
included inquiries into why and how something reminded her/ him of national
identity. Whenever the interviewees talked about their national identity in relation
to multiculturalism, I also asked them to think of whether/ how they encountered
this multiculturalism in their internet use.
• Imagining a Canadian online space: this question asked if the respondent can
imagine such a space and what it would look like (Q5: How would a Canadian
online space look?). Several interviewees required more information in order to
make sense of this question; in those cases, I emphasized the exploratory nature of
this question and asked them to feel free to talk about the things that they would
associate with a 'Canadian online space' or, if nothing comes to mind, to explain
why the question does not make sense to them. 152
• Regulation and nation-building: the questions in this section aimed at probing
what the respondents thought of the regulation of the internet in Canada. I also
wanted to use the theme of regulation to link the nation-building aspect of the
regulative framework on radio and television (particularly the idea of Canadian
content quotas) to thinking about the nation-building potential of the internet. As
such, the questions asked were: Q6: What do you know about the regulation of
the internet in Canada?; Q7: In the case of the regulation of radio and television,
there was a lively discussion about the potential of these media to destroy or to
build Canadian identity. How do you think the internet may impact national
identity?
4.2.3.3 The analysis
I analyzed the interviews137 by focusing on both what was said and how it was said. This approach draws on an understanding of communication as having three components: a performative aspect (what is done by saying something), a content aspect (how things are being organized in what is said), and an accountability aspect (how speakers establish their legitimacy to speak) (Potter, Edwards & Wetherell, 1993)138 It shares with the analysis tool used for the analysis of policy and newspaper texts an approach to interpreting the utterance as a site where identity is constructed and power is being negotiated not only between the speakers, but also in relation to the existing social structures and their associated discourses.
137 All the interviews were recorded and transcribed in full 138 This approach borrows on a theoretical level from a variety of frameworks such as symbolic mteractionism, speech acts, systemic-functional linguistics, critical discourse analysis, Foucault's work on discourses, etc (Potter et al, 1990) 153
Thus, the analysis of the interviews was done in two stages:
First stage: the interviews were read, summarized and organized by question. This
allowed me to form an overview of what was being said, how many times it was
repeated, and how it relates to answers provided to other questions. In this
process, a number of topics of discussions as well as several identity
performances emerged as common across interviews (detailed in Chapter 8). I
have then focused the analysis on the questions dealing with three of the
conceptual relations common in the analysis of policy and media texts (questions
4-7 above). This choice of analysis offers a way of connecting the analysis of
macro discourses to the analysis of micro interactions, as we are thus able to see
how these conceptual relations are articulated, used and inserted into the
construction of the communicative instance by speakers (see Table 4 below).
Table 4: Conceptual relations and Interview Questions
Conceptual ' Existence > Qualification j Agency Relation N on I | N qualifies I > I impacts N Question | Q4: When you are online, are there ' Q5: What would a Q7: In the case of the regulation of radio any moments when you are I Canadian online I and television, there was a lively reminded of your national identity?/ space look like? discussion about the potential of these ! or/ What the things that you ( media to destroy or to build Canadian ] encounter online remind you of i ' identity. How do you think the internet may your national identity? , I impact national identity?
Second stage: the answers provided to the three questions above were analyzed,
paying attention to both their content and to what speakers do when they offer
their story (performance of identity, negotiating their place in relation to the
existing social structure and to the perceived power relations in society,
constructing authority etc.). The questions oriented respondents towards thinking
about their own national identity in relation to their internet use. The analysis 154
focused on how they constructed this relation and on how they presented
themselves in this process. I paid particular attention to both what the
respondents constructed in answering my questions, as well as to their acceptance/
rejection of the questions, following Riessman's (2002) observation that
interviewees not only provide their opinion, but they also present an image of who
they are and what moral universes they espouse.
4.3 Summary
This chapter has outlined the methodological framework and the specific method of analysis for this thesis. The choice of CDA followed from the theoretical framework espoused here, since CDA focuses on analyzing the relation between language and power. This relation, understood from a Foucaultian perspective, recommends that the choices (in)forming the organization of texts are connected to - and indicative of- networks of power. Importantly, CDA fills a gap that Foucault's model left open: where doing an archaeology by following Foucault's detailed recommendation can be daunting,
CDA provides a range of tools for analysis. The specific method used here consisted of two related tools: the first was applied to the study of policy and media texts, while the second was used to examine the interviews. In both cases, the focus was on the ways in which conceptual relations were established, starting from the underlying premise that conceptual relations between the main concepts associated with the research question
(nation, internet, global) were able to shed light on the processes through which a new medium was negotiated in relation to the specific historical structures and to the discursive resources allowing participants to legitimize their articulations of the internet. 155
Chapter 5: An Overview of the Internet in Canada
CDA works rest on a view of discourse "as socially constitutive as well as socially conditioned" (Blommaert & Bulcaen, 2000, p. 448). In other words, both the texts and the social structures within which they are produced/ consumed are crucial to understanding the relation between thought and power. As John Thompson explained, the interpretation of ideology requires a socio-historical analysis, outlining "the relations of domination which characterize the context within which symbolic forms are produced and received"
(1990, p. 292). In line with these views of discourse analysis, this chapter outlines the context and development of the internet in Canada. The chapter shows that historically, nationalism has been central to the constitution of media in intellectual as well as policy thought. Second, the chapter offers a picture of the social structure within which the introduction of the internet takes place, indicating the main institutional actors, topics and discourses shaping this process.
The outline presented here is guided by two principles of selection. First, the discussion focuses exclusively on the level of federal policy, ignoring the complex federal/ provincial political aspects. While these are certainly important, the decision making power in the regulation of communication media has traditionally been in the hands of the federal government (Barney, 2005). Second, the overview focuses exclusively on the policy dynamics within the Canadian state. The trade agreements with the United States (US), transnational internet governance groups, information industry transnational giants, and the ICT policy arrangements in other countries constitute an important discursive network that influences policy-making in Canada (Abramson, 2002; 156
Abramson & Raboy, 1999; Mosco, 2001; Schiller, 1999). However, when it comes to the institutional arrangement of the internet on the state level, global constraints are translated into local arrangements through policy-making.
5.1 Communication and Nationalism in Intellectual Thought
The introduction of new technologies never took place in a vacuum: it necessarily entailed the material and symbolic networks available in particular locations, but also their unintended consequences. In this sense, a technology was always a process of
"struggles and negotiations among interested parties [...]. The outcome is a particular definition and a structure for a new technology, perhaps even a 'reinvention' of the device. The story could always have been otherwise if the struggles had proceeded differently" (Fischer, 1992, p. 16).
The introduction of communication technologies in Canada has been placed under nation-building goals (Adria, 2003; Babe, 2000; Barney, 2005; Friesen, 2000; Raboy,
1995, 1996; Vipond, 1989; Young, 2003). For Maurice Charland, technology has always held a specific place in (anglophone) Canadian nationalism: it was seen as having "the capacity to create a nation by enhancing communication" (1986, p. 197). He further explained that technology was not only seen as central to the Canadian state, but "the idea of Canada depends upon a rhetoric about technology" (Charland, 1986, p. 199). The relation between communication media and the 'Canadian nation' held a special place in the Canadian intellectual landscape'39: "Canadian identity is, and always has been, fully
139 In a review of Canadian thought on communication, Robert Babe (2000) included Harold Innis, George Grant, Northrop Frye, Dallas Smythe, Irene Spry, Marshall McLuhan, Graham Spry, John Grierson, C. B. MacPherson, Gertrude Robinson . 157 integral to the question of technology. Indeed, a sustained and intensive reflection on the meaning of the technological experience is the Canadian discourse" (Kroker, 1984, p. 12).
Leslie Regan Shade (2008) proposed that this obsession took the form of a mixture of policy-driven scholastic interests (the problematic of communication studies emerging in response to the various royal commissions studying media) and nationalist fears of being assimilated by the United States. In Canada, the field of communication studies was thus primarily marked by two concerns: a policy-oriented interest in mass media, and a pessimistic take on national sovereignty and cultural identity (Shade, 2008).
Similarly, Robert Babe (2000) remarked that Canadian thought on communication media was marked by five major tropes: the relation with the United States, the role of technology in relation to the nation, the question of community and diversity, a concern with democracy and freedom, and an interest in the political economy of institutions and technologies140.
Historically, the tradition of thinking about communication media in relation to the Canadian nation originated in the work of Harold Innis (also discussed in Chapter 2).
Innis, considered seminal for the development of a 'Canadian' approach to communication studies (Bickerton, Brooks & Gagnon, 2006; Heyer, 2003; Babe, 2000,
2008), placed this relation at the centre of his theory of centres of power and peripheries.
This theory saw peripheries as suppliers of raw materials, that are then transported to and consumed by power centres. The demand from the centre, Innis argued, drove the development of the periphery; in this process, the periphery became dependent for its 140 It is interesting to note that Robert Babe's book Canadian Communication Thought (2000) can itself be understood (perhaps against the intentions of the author) as an attempt to 'nationalize' ideas: "Considered together, despite sometimes large differences in political and ontological understanding, they [the examined writers] contribute to, and form, a distinctively Canadian way of understanding communication and communicatory processes" (Babe, 2000, p. 33). 158 economic survival on the centre. For Innis, this was precisely the process through which
Canada, as a country, was formed. Technology and communication media were the material means through which the centre (whether England or the United States) shaped the 'periphery'.
Some thirty years later, Dallas Smythe (1981) re-vamped this thesis as the
'dependency' argument. More assertive than Innis, Smythe declared that "Canada is effectively part of the United States core of monopoly capitalism" (Smythe, 1988, p.ix).
Informed by the work of the Frankfurt School, Smythe argued that mass media form a
'consciousness industry' producing audiences for the purpose of selling and thus making a profit. Given that this 'consciousness industry' in Canada was controlled from the United
States, Smythe saw that as a sign that Canada had become the economic backyard of
American capitalism. This, he argued, was perpetuated by Canadian elites, co-opted by
American capitalism into keeping the country in a state of dependency.
This legacy informed not only subsequent political economic approaches to communication (e.g. Babe, 1990; Mansell, 1985; Raboy, 1992b, 1995, 1996), but also policy-making debates. As we shall see next, the tropes of foreign ownership and of the necessity of ensuring 'Canadian control' over the 'Canadian communication system' have been crucial legitimacy mechanisms in defending specific policy arrangements. As Paul
Litt argued, the concentration of mass culture production in the United States "created conditions in which the culture lobby in Canada could argue that mass culture was not a natural part of their society, but something that was threatening Canada from the south"
(1992, p. 106). The centre/ periphery frame was a particularly useful mobilization tool141, l4lIn a different context, nationalism scholar John Breuilly (1982) argued that such frames were particularly useful in mobilizing constituencies in colonial contexts. Although Canada may not be considered as a 159 also legitimizing policy proposals around the internet. It is interesting to note here that this pessimism on the future of Canada has always been accompanied by an effort to position Canada as a "superior national character" (Litt, 1992, p. 104). On the other hand, the discussions about 'Canada' and its identity have also been permeated by a sense of uncertainty or ambiguity (Babe, 2000).
The other side of this pessimism was a feeling of resignation in the face of the perceived inevitability of the technological wave. For example, George Grant's Lament for a Nation depicted a highly technologized United States that was weakening the
Canadian nation. Unlike Innis's economic explanation, Grant was more interested in
cultural aspects. By allowing themselves be driven by technology, he argued, Canadians
would eventually loose sight of what constituted them as a nation, namely a shared
universe of values centred around freedom, community and democracy (Bickerton,
Brooks & Gagnon, 2006, pp. 36-7; Bumsted, 2001, pp. 28-9). Another Canadian
intellectual, Northrop Frye, echoed this view. For him, mass media was only one stage in
the technologization of modern society, a process seen as destroying the sense of
community (Frye, 2003, p. 134). Yet, Frye also thought of print as an enabler of
democracy and freedom, which was indicative of the dialectic view of communication as
both potential enabler, and potential destroyer of the Canadian nation (Kroker, 1984;
Babe, 2000).
With Marshall McLuhan's work (see also Chapter 2), this pessimism on
technology changed. Where Grant and Frye offered gloomy visions of the future,
McLuhan was enthusiastic about technological prospects, speaking of a '"cosmic man'
former colony, the invocation of a quasi-colonial dependency has been often used in political discourse. 160 caught up in a more cosmopolitan, and Darwinian, struggle among competing media of communication" (Kroker, 1984, p. 53). And while McLuhan (1962) also announced that electronic media will erode nations and create a cosmopolitan 'global village', he seemed less alarmed by this possibility than Grant or Frye. For Kroker, McLuhan's project is one of appropriating technologies: an attempt to "recover the civilizing moment in the processed world of technological society by developing a critical humanism appropriate to the popular culture of North America" (Kroker, 1984, p. 54).
As we shall see next, the policy documents on the internet preserve this ambivalence of communication media, but ultimately approach it enthusiastically. As a rhetorical device, the 'nationalization' of technology offers a particularly useful legitimation tool. Importantly, communication media remain central to the project of
Canadian nation-building (Friesen, 2000; Hutchinson, 1999; Lorimer & Wilson, 1988)'42.
5.2 Communication and Nationalism in the Policy Sphere
Like in the case of the intellectual thought discussed above, Canadian policy-makers relied on the tropes of national unity, national sovereignty, national culture and national exceptionalism to frame and regulate these technologies (Young, 2003). Yet, this reliance is not a reflection of a 'national' character of technologies, or of 'nationalist' demands from the public on the regulation of communication media. Rather, the process of
'nationalizing' these media has to be understood as negotiation between cultural elites, government bodies, business interests and occasionally citizen groups. The processual 142 Friesen (2000) has tried to rewrite the 'national history' of Canada from the perspective of communication. Just like Deutsch, Friesen attempted to rescue the idea of the 'nation' by centering it on communication and meaning-making processes: Canadian identity develops out of Canadians "talkfing] together within shared community institutions and evaluating] their experiences in the light of a common inheritance" (2000, p. 227). 161 nature of this 'nationalization' is an often forgotten dimension in historical approaches to the regulation of communication media.
5.2.1 The carriers: from telegraphy to telecommunications
The Canadian regulative framework on communication media, from telegraphy to the internet, relies on the separation between telecommunications and broadcasting (or, to put it differently, between carriers and content providers). This separation remains however artificial, since from a technological point of view, broadcasting involves a similar transmission through electromagnetical systems (also Abramson & Raboy, 1994; Babe,
1996). In a nutshell, telecommunications refer to technologies such as telegraph, telephone, cable, satellite, wireless etc. able to transfer voice or data over distance; this transmission is understood as point-to-point one (from one person to another). This
separation has historically contributed to shaping the public perception that while a national telecommunications infrastructure was crucial to the survival of the 'nation', the
content carried over the waves or the wires was of a more personal nature143. Defined as
carrier networks, telecommunications were initially regulated along with transportation
networks (e.g. the railway). And, like the railway, they became cornerstones of the
economic nationalist platform (the First National Policy) launched by the conservative
government in 1879 (Rideout, 2003).
In this context, the nationalist construction of the railway is informative, particularly since its dynamics have been replicated in the case of both
l43Of course, this view obscures the fact that neither the telegraph nor the telephone had to be point-to-point transmission technologies. In fact, in its early days, the telephone was also used to 'broadcast', as users could tune in via the telephone to listen to news or music programmes, just as they would subsequently do with the radio (see Fischer, 1992; Babe, 1990). 162 telecommunications and broadcasting. The building of an intercontinental railway was specified in the 1867 British North American Act consecrating the establishment of federal Canada as a dominion under the British Crown. The railway has subsequently been touted as crucial to strengthening the political union, by enabling the development of an interdependent economy that would integrate the country (e.g Ajzenstat, 2003;
Berton, 1971; McNaught, 1976). However, at the time when the project was debated, the railway did not necessarily appear to everyone as a 'backbone' of the Canadian nation.
For instance, many saw the railway as an instrument of integration within the American empire (MacDougall, 2007).
5.2.1.1 The Telegraph
Like the internet today, the telegraph was often announced to the public as a globalizing
(or, more appropriate for the time, internationalizing) medium: "the telegraph wire, the nerve of international life, transmitting knowledge of events, removing causes of misunderstanding, and promoting peace and harmony throughout the world" (Standage,
1998, p. 91)144.
In Canada, the telegraph was developed from the very beginning by private companies, taking the form of a duopoloy (Rens, 2001; Rideout, 2003)145. Although the importance of telegraphy was growing146, the government waited for almost 40 years
144 It is interesting to note that at the time, the international circulation of information was not seen as a threat to national identity, but rather as a positive dynamic that could contribute to world peace However, this may stem from the excitement with the possibility of international communication in the context of the change in the perception of time and space associated with modernity (Kern, 1983) On the other hand, this may also be associated with the national/ international dynamic discussed in Chapter 2 145 The first telegram exchange took place in 1846 between Toronto and Hamilton (Rens, 2001) 146 Particularly m terms of news transmission, but also in military situations like the Saskatchewan Metis rebellion 163 until regulating this technology147. Yet, even then, the government did not produce a unified policy on the matter; in fact, the most important regulatory impact stemmed from a court decision148 and in 1910, the regulator (the Railway Commission) forbade telegraph companies from acting as press agencies. This 'stabilized' (Bijker, Hughes &
Pinch, 1989) the telegraph as a 'carrier medium', marking the separation between carriage and content (Rens, 2001, p. 36).
5.2.1.2 The Telephone
The development of the telephone in Canada was also industry driven. The government took an active stand, opting for a government-regulated private monopoly (Babe, 1990;
MacDougall, 2007; Rens, 2001). The Bell Telephone Company of Canada was incorporated by the Parliament in 1880 to develop the telephone market in Canada.
Although other regional networks were eventually developed, the monopolistic position of Bell was preferred as the best possible solution for ensuring a reliable network across
Canada. Known as the doctrine of'natural monopoly' (Babe, 1990, p. 136), this argument proposed that one big industry actor had better resources to ensure universal service and consistent quality standards, in the context of a vast territory with a scattered population.
However, in reality, the period between 1880s-1970s was characterized by price wars and interconnection issues (Babe, 1990)149.
147 In 1882, the government formed the Government Telegraphy and Signal Service (by bringing together all lines built with governmental funding). 148 The court settlement of the dispute over the distribution of news between a major telegraph company (Canadian Pacific Telegraphs) and its subscribers (newspapers). Throughout the end of the 1880s, telegraph companies became involved in news collection and distribution, to the extent that Canadian Pacific Telegraphs attained a monopolistic position, imposing prices and conditions on newspapers. The court found the telegraph company guilty of monopolistic practices. l49To be more accurate, Bell lost its monopolistic status around 1885, in the sense that other telephone companies were formed in those provinces where Bell had little incentive to develop the network. 164
Bell's government-sanctioned de facto monopoly lasted until the mid 1970s, when the regulation of telephony was transfered from transportation bodies to the Canadian
Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). The change - also known as the beginning of the de-regulation process - can broadly be described as an increasing retreat of federal agencies from the direct regulation of the telecommunications industry in terms of prices and products/ services being offered. The tendency to rely on market self- regulation via competition was part of wider social dynamics, including the rise of neoliberalism (Rideout, 2003) and the emergence of other technologies, such as mobile cellulars, cable and communication satellites (Brennan, 2008; McPhail & McPhail, 1990;
Wilson, 1996).
5.2.1.3 Telecomunications
In 1968, the field of telecommunications was placed under the newly created Department of Communications (DoC), marking the beginning of a single telecommunications policy framework. In a practice that would become standard, the DoC set up a series of consultative bodies, asked to provide expert advice on the future policy (McPhail &
McPhail, 1990)150. After almost two decades of consultations, the single policy framework was accomplished in 1993, with the passing of the Telecommunications Act. This act spelled out a set of policy objectives, such as ensuring universal access, promoting
Canadian ownership and control of carriers, and fostering reliance on market forces. All
However, Bell retained a de facto monopoly in the sense of being the biggest (and most powerful) actor in the telephone business; furthermore, Bell also controlled the long-distance interconnections, which placed constraints on many of the local networks (see Babe, 1990). 150 The first such body was the Telecommission, established in 1969. Another important body was the Consultative Committee on Implications of Telecommunication for Canadian Sovereignty, established in 1978 and mandated to ensure that the telecoms system safeguarded Canada's national sovereignty. 165 of them were wrapped in the nationalist rhetoric of the preservation of national identity and sovereignty. This effectively positioned telecommunications as a cornerstone of
"Canadian sovereignty" upon which the material and spiritual survival of the nation depended (Ministry of Supply and Services, 1979, especially pp. 1-5). As we shall see next, this nationalistic formulation was also present in the policy approach to the internet.
When the DoC was eliminated in 1993, communications media were assigned to different ministers: broadcasting to Heritage Canada, telecommunications and the information highway to Industry Canada. The latter viewed telecoms as a primarily economic matter; as Abramson and Raboy explain, this effectively split communications into "'hard' economic issues (telecommunications) and 'soft' cultural issues
(broadcasting)", with the former being perceived as an expert-dominated field where nationalism was not present (1999, p. 778).
However, in spite of an increasing push from Industry Canada for reliance on market dynamics, CRTC continued to regulate telecoms, in what can be termed a
"managed liberalization" of the market (Wilson, 1996). The clash between CRTC and
Industry Canada over regulatory intervention led to the 2005 appointment of the
Telecommunication Policy Review Panel (Brennan, 2008). Although the ensuing report proposed a series of amendments to the telecoms sector, it also reinforced the reliance on market forces and minimal regulative intervention. Importantly, these amendments were framed as the means through which Canada could regain its economic and technological leadership position in the global market (Industry Canada, 2006).
The discourse of nationalism has framed the telecommunications policy documents from the 1970s on; but the articulations through which nationalism remained 166 the means of legitimizing particular configurations offerees shifted to what can be called an economic nationalist discourse, which equated 'national interest1 with economic leadership. The telecoms policy documents often rehearsed the overarching Innisian theme of telecommunications as central to the survival of the nation, particularly against the perceived threat of the information influx from the United States (e.g Mansell, 1985;
McPhail & McPhail, 1990).
5.2.2 The content providers: broadcasting
The government did not take action on radio until private interests had already developed an incipient system. Although the Minister of Marine and Fisheries collected taxes for radio frequency use, there was little governmental interference in terms of both content and the organization of radio stations as a system (especially since many of these stations were in fact in the United States). This was to change, as the broadcasting format of radio became a vehicle for criticizing the government151. The result of this entanglement was the appointment of the 1929 Aird Commission to examine the future of radio in Canada
(Raboy, 1992a, 1992b; MacDougall, 2007; McPhail & McPhail, 1990). Further events, such as the aborted 1931 Christmas broadcast152, seemed to demonstrate to both policy-
151 Several radio stations ran by the political arm of the Jehova Witness, as well as some Catholic radio stations were broadcasting these attacks Consequently, some radio licenses were revoked in 1928, prompting a Parliamentary debate on the right to religious opinion and freedom of speech 152 In 1931, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) planned to relay King George V's Christmas discourse to all British colonies In Canada, the transmission between the various stations was ensured via the telegraph lines of the Canadian National Railway (CNR) Yet, for BBC to be able to connect to these lines, it needed to connect through AT&T first (the signal being subsequently relayed to Canada) But AT&T's policy was to transmit to Canada only through the lines of its subsidiary, Bell Canada In spite of initially promising to relay the broadcast, in the end AT&T refused to interconnect to CNR lines While this may have had more to do with corporate policy than nationalism, politicians in Canada were outraged (the story is recounted in MacDougall, 2007) 167 makers and the public that "an all-Canadian radio network was needed" (MacDougall,
2007, p. 57).
The commission was asked to work in response to the growing popularity and unhindered availability of American radio stations in Canada. Its task was that of making recommendations on a radio system that would best serve Canada's national interests.
This effectively wrapped the commission's work in a nationalist rhetoric (Gasher,
1998)153. Not surprisingly, the final report concluded that radio was "a great force in fostering a national spirit and interpreting national citizenship" (quoted in the Massey
Commission Report, 1951, p. 24). Foreign programs were described as a danger to the nation, being charged with "mould[ing] the minds of young people in the home to ideals and opinions that are not Canadian" (quoted in McPhail & McPhail, 1990, p. 146). The
Commission thus recommended the creation of a strongly regulated national radio system, effectively enshrining the national framing of radio.
Yet, it is important to remember that the nation-building potential of radio was neither inherent to technology, nor immediately obvious to the government. In fact, this potential should be understood as the result of a long process of social negotiation, in which the government, the industry and cultural elites sought to legitimize their perspectives on and interest in how radio, and subsequently television, should be organized (Former, 2005; Gasher, 1998; Lift, 1992; MacDougall, 2007; Raboy, 1994;
Vipond, 1992). For, in spite of setting a nationalist agenda in the first place, the government still hesitated in implementing the Aird Report recommendations. Nationalist 153 The creation of the national radio system was not a 'national desire'. Looking at the public submissions to the Aird Commission, Gasher (1998) found that while some members of the public supported the idea of a Canadian radio, others did not. Such views from the public reveal that many people either "found very little objection to material coming over the air from the United States" or saw no problem in declaring: "I am one Canadian listener who decidedly prefers American programmes" (Gasher, 1998). 168 pressure to create the national radio system came from a civil society group, the Canadian
Radio League: radio, the League argued, was an instrument of information, education and entertainment, that had to be geared towards transmitting the culture and reinforcing the social organization of the 'Canadian nation'. The League arduously lobbied the government, as well as popularized this cause within the wider Canadian society.
In 1932, the Radio Broadcasting Act acted on these ideas, establishing a public national broadcasting system under the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission
(CRBC)154. CRBC gradually purchased or leased existing radio stations, as well as broadcasted its programming on private stations for a couple of hours a day. Thus, although private stations continued to exist, they de facto became part of the 'national system' and were expected to adopt the same mission of building the Canadian nation.
The creation of the CRBC - and indeed, the idea of a Canadian radio - was not without critics (Fortner, 2005; Gasher, 1998); but once the system was in place, the mythology around its significance for Canadian national identity (as both the expression of a pre- existent national will and as an instrument of strengthening it) effaced the reality that audiences in Canada continued to consume radio programs from the United States and to evaluate national broadcasts by the standards set by these programs (Babe, 1990; Fortner,
2005).
1,4 Yet, as Raboy (1992) points out, this act also furthered the problem of the 'two solitudes' in Canada, by enabling the creation of distinct but parallel English and French broadcasting systems Paradoxically, although radio (and subsequently television) was understood as an instrument of national unity, it also deepened the divide between English and French Canada (by drawing territorial boundaries to these communities and thus segregating them from each other) As radio becomes a local medium, it can be seen as further strengthening local identities, which in the context of the federal-provincial struggle for power, may be seen as fragmenting the nation In my opinion, this points to the process through which a new technology becomes associated with particular configurations of social forces and inscribed with meaning and with specific social roles 169
In 1936, CRBC was restructured into the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
(CBC). With the rapid growth of television155, CBC launched its own television service for large cities in 1948. This precipitated the creation of the 1952 Massey Commission
(the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences), entrusted to review the entire cultural system in Canada (Litt, 1992). By 1950s, there were already 150,000 television sets in Canada and the emerging trend of television consumption became yet again defined by the same tension between audience preferences, program availability and Canadian nationalist rhetoric (Attallah & Foster,
2002). As Litt argued, nationalism provided yet again the frame through which television was approached; importantly, this frame allowed the Massey Commission's elitist cultural goals to be presented as a "combination of lowbrow pretence and patriotic purpose" to frame the legitimacy of its policy recommendations on television (Litt, 1992, p. 66).
The Massey Report successfully inscribed 'national culture' as a central pillar of the state, "articulating] a vision of national culture based on bicultural tolerations and cross-pollination" (Litt, 1992, p. 6)156. Yet, the public reception of the report ranged from enthusiastic support to disinterest and accusations of elitism and paternalism157. Finally,
l55In the mid 1930s, the government had already decided that television "was not an economically feasible medium in the Canadian market at that time" and therefore left it aside in terms of regulation (McPhail & McPhail, 1990, p 149) 156 In a broad sense, 'culture' had always been part of the Canadian government's agenda, as the latter "engaged in social planning, heritage preservation and a variety of propagandists programs involving the arts " (Mitchell, 1988, p 164) Initially, culture was seen as a means to achieving "cultural unity" However, this soon raised the suspicion that the federal government was trying to strengthen its centralized control over the provinces Thus, from the very beginning, the Massey Commission tried not to upset any province, and particularly Quebec (Litt 1992) From the 1970s on, the nationalist understanding of'culture' undergoes a transformation, with the emergence of the multiculturalist doctrine Nevertheless, the trope of the "Canadian culture" besieged by the omnipresent "American culture" remained constant 157 In Quebec, some voices questioned whether "the Canadian culture promoted by the Massey Report was not itself a menace to French Canadian culture" (Litt, 1992, pp 227-8) In general however, the French press seemed to consider the bi-culturalism promoted by the Report (in the form of bilingual broadcasting services) good enough 170 some challenged the idea that American culture was a 'threat': "An American is basically the same as a Canadian - motivated by the same impulses, exposed to the same influence
[...] In the first place, what is wrong with American culture?" (local broadcasting entrepreneur quoted in Litt, 1992, p. 72).
The Massey Report recommended a stronger role for CBC. Yet, somewhat paradoxically, the stronger this role was, the less Canadian the content became: as CBC broadcasted for longer hours, it started needing more content. The production of content became the central theme of broadcasting policy and subsequent advisory boards were appointed to examine the question of whether broadcasting was fulfilling its national goal
(1955 Fowler Commission, 1965 Advisory Committee on Broadcasting, 1986 Caplan and
Sauvageau Task Force). These bodies emphasized the need for imposing Canadian content (Cancon) quota requirements on the national broadcasting system. For example, the Fowler Report argued: "as a nation, we cannot accept [...] the natural and complete flow of another nation's culture without danger to our national identity" (quoted in
McPhail & McPhail, 1990, p. 151).
The period between the 1960s and the 1980s was thus characterized by a regulatory effort to 'Canadianize the airwaves', rhetorically legitimized by pointing at the alleged failure of the market to produce Canadian content (McPhail & McPhail, 1990, p.
153). The 1968 Broadcasting Act restated that Canadian national consciousness and unity are to be the goals of both public and private stations; it also established the Canadian
Radio and Television Commission (CRTC) as the supervisory board mandated to oversee the broadcasting system. CRTC's work focused on two issues: Cancon quota and
Canadian ownership. These objectives were to be further complexified by the 171 development of new broadcasting technologies such as cable, satellites and wireless which were often seen as threats to Canadian cultural sovereignty.
In spite of establishing content quotas, as well as providing funding for the development of programs 'made in Canada'158, Cancon remained a thorny issue: as
Attallah and Foster wonder, just "what counts as a Canadian story?" (2002, p. 229). The drawing of national boundaries around cultural products remains highly problematic, as culture itself is more fluid and complex than nationalist mythology proposes.
Furthermore, in the case of broadcasting, it has often been the case that productions made in Canada emulated the successful model of American programs; this phenomenon is often a part of the global commodification of culture, where cultural products are marketed to worldwide consumption markets in a quest for profit159.
The nationalist framing of broadcasting policy has made its way into the information policy as well. However, at the same time, this framing has itself changed, as the emphasis shifted from cultural to economic issues. This shift is indicated in the 1986
Caplan-Sauvageau Report (McNulty, 1988), which for the first time appeased concerns about Canadian content: in spite of the dominance of American programming, the report concluded that broadcasting was fulfilling its goal of maintaining national identity
(McPhail & McPhail, 1990). This shift was further strengthened by the increasing technological pressures of (technological) convergence. Thus, while digital technologies, cable, satellites and wireless were still regarded as a 'Trojan horse' in respect to the
158 Through TeleFilm Canada, established in 1983. 159 On this note, it is interesting to note that Cancon discussions always talk about the 'American threat'. However, there are also other sources of cultural content that could cater more to Canada's diverse society, should there be a will on the part of broadcasters to introduce it and on the part of audiences to consume it. The case of Quebec is indicative here: French-speaking broadcasters air content not only from France, but from other Francophone countries. Similarly, Bollywood and Latin American soap operas have become important cultural staples in other parts of the world, yet broadcasters in Canada almost never opt for them. 172 preservation of Canadian national culture, in many respects these technologies were also viewed "as the cornerstone for an industry strategy that could sweep Canada into the information age" (Babe, 1990, p. 212).
This historical overview suggests several important aspects that are of relevance here. First, policy builds upon pre-existing configurations of ideas and actors. Second, at the time of developing a particular policy, various articulations (as well as possible future configurations of that technology) are possible. From this perspective, policy inscribes a particular arrangement that subsequently becomes the lens for re-interpreting the past160.
Once nationalism comes to frame telecommunications and broadcasting issues, all other actors adopt it as the mechanism for ensuring the legitimacy of their proposals (e.g.
Former, 2005; Bashevkin, 1988). Third, the nationalism framing of communication media policy should not be understood as stable; in the case of the policy dynamics reviewed here, it changed from the trope of national unity to those of cultural diversity,
Canadian exceptionalism and competitiveness in the global arena (also Barney, 2005;
Young, 2003)161. The latter idea in particular is indicative of an increasing trend in legitimizing policy choices by recourse to the trope of the necessity to transform Canada into a technological brand-name on the global market. This discursive shift brings to the l60On a slightly different note, in his own account of the history of telegraphy in Canada, Winseck (1999) describes the complex and mutual shaping of the policy environment and the industry sector. Thus, Winseck argues that in the case of telegraphy, the state has stepped in to make technology appear profitable to the industry. This statist intervention however is retroactive, in the sense of emerging only after social forces that could potentially benefit from these technologies start to crystallize. On the other hand, the intervention of the government also shapes the crystallization of these social forces, by providing a framework (legal framework, subsidies etc.) within which these forces can move from a 'methodless enthusiasm' on new technologies to a 'strategic consolidation' (1999, pp. 139-143).This is an interesting lens for approaching and understanding some of the policy dynamics described next. l6,Darrin Barney links this to the 1985 Macdonald Report (the report of the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects to Canada), which he sees as epitomizing the neoliberal rhetoric stressing the "need for Canada to maintain an adaptive economy capable of adjusting to international economic changes and new technologies" (2005, p. 41). 173 forefront an emphasis on industry dynamics (particularly exports); this is often juxtaposed to the threat of being left behind in the "technological race" (McNulty, 1988, p. 181). Fourth, nationalist rhetoric was differently used to legitimize the specific roles of carriers and content providers: carriers were primarily discussed in economic terms, while content was understood in cultural ones. All of these dynamics set the context for the policy debates around the information highway.
5.2.3 The Information High way
The four major policy concerns that have framed the approach to the internet stem from the historical context presented so far: a preoccupation with ensuring access to technology, an interest in Canadian content and an economic view of innovation and global competitiveness. While not entirely absent, the question of ownership receded into the background162. Instead, other economic aspects gained primacy: the emphasis on the need for a partnership between the industry and the government, and the alleged economic benefits of technology within both internal and external markets (e.g. job creation, international competitiveness) (Barney, 2005; Birdsall, 1999; d'Haenens &
Proulx, 2000; Morton, 1995)163.
162 Morton (1995) argues that the first internet policy processes were driven precisely by fear of foreign ownership Currently, foreign ownership restrictions are significant in broadcasting (20% in voting interest of licensees and 33% of voting interest of parent or holding company) and telecommunications (20%) These companies are also the main actors in the field of the internet in terms of distribution (infrastructure) and internet service providing (ISPs) 163 Buchwald (2000) argues that the policy process around the information highway emerged in the context of a conflict over values that pitch deregulation against the principle of universality (where social welfare and services do not depend on income, means or needs, but are available to everyone) 174
5.2.3.1 Early information policy (1960s-1980s)
Information technologies have been a part of the federal government's policy agenda since the 1960s. At that time, the focus was on the status of computer databases and electronic information. The federal government was the largest producer of digital information (Morton, 1995). Its information management policy, overseen primarily by the Treasury Board, had four major objectives that remain central in today's information policy: preservation of information, industry involvement under government control,
Crown copyright, and public access to electronic data (Nielsen, 1993). However, as a producer of digital information, the government also had a particular economic relationship with the ICT sector: the industry was responsible for developing new
database-related technologies, while the government took on the role of fostering the
development of the domestic component of this industry (Nielsen, 1993, 1994; Mansell,
1985).
By the end of the 1960s, several policy reports recommended the creation of a national strategy on databases that would ensure Canadian control over information164.
Notable here is the famous report prepared by Jean-Francois Lyotard for the Council of
Universities of the Provincial Government of Quebec165. The report voiced the core
(academic) concern around computerization: the potential to become an instrument of
capitalist control, dominated by market principles (Lyotard, 1979/1984). By the 1980s
however, this worry was displaced by a discourse labelling information as corporate
resource and emphasizing the cost recovery aspects of information management (Nielsen,
,54The 1969 Telecommisision Report, the 1971 study Telecommission: Study of Institutional Arrangements for Optimizing Developments of Databases in the Public Interest, the 1978 Clyne Report (Telecommunications in Canada). '^ See also the discussion on Lyotard in Chapter 2. 175
1993)166. At the same time, the major telecoms actors developed an aggressive industry lobby, developing a close relationship with the government (Birdsall, 1999).
All of these prepared the ground for the economic approach to the information highway, portrayed as a continuation of the "hard" economic framing of telecommunications (Abramson & Raboy, 1999). The last major telecoms study before the arrival of the internet warned that "of all the technologies that are developing so rapidly today, that of informatics poses possibly the most dangerous threat to Canadian sovereignty, in both its cultural and commercial aspects" (Ministry of Supply and
Services Canada, 1979, p. 57). Rehearsing the frame of communication media as both opportunity and threat for the Canadian nation, the report linked the possibility of a
'golden future' to the inevitability of the technological wave (also Barney, 2005, p. 11).
With a sense of urgency that would become common throughout the '90s, the committee argued that Canada must seize the openings brought by ICTs and become a global leader in the field (Ministry of Supply and Services Canada, 1979, p. 58). This rhetorical positioning of Canada on an allegedly global information market, coupled with an emphasis on non-intervention will become, as discussed in the next chapter, the preferred mechanism of legitimacy for presenting the internet policy to the public (also Mansell,
1985; Young, 2003).
5.2.1.1 Building the 'information highway' (1990s)
The first computer networks in Canada appeared in the 1970s and regionally connected a small number of universities. By the early 1980s, these university networks connected to l66Nielsen (1994, p. 198) links this to the 1984 Conservative government ideological shift to market mechanisms, expenditure restraint and efficient management. 176 the ARPANet, usually through phone lines (ITU, 2003; Miller et al., 1999)167. In the early
1990s, as these networks became increasingly regarded as a potential source of profit, the telephone industry publicly started to push for a governmental strategy on "a national information highway", consisting of a network of smaller local (telecoms) networks
(Babe, 1996)168. In response to these pressure from the industry (as well as from the research and education sector), but also against the background of a growing official interest in the internet in the United States, the federal government made the information highway a government priority and announced the formation of a new consultative body - the Information Highway Advisory Committee (IHAC)169 - to look into the future of networking technologies in Canada (Barney, 2005, p. 43).
Formed in 1994, IHAC was given a specific agenda informed by a set of economic objectives: foster innovation, ensure connectivity, reliance on market forces and increase opportunities for trade (Barney, 2005, p. 43). In fact, IHAC itself remained dominated by industry actors (63% out of its 30 members came from the private sector)
(Barney, 2005, p. 46; also Buchwald, 2000)170. Not surprisingly then, IHAC's recommendations rehearsed three major tropes: economic imperatives, cultural
""According to the International Telecommunication Union report on Canada, the first official connection to ARPANet was in 1983, but Canada has unofficially been connected to the network through Usenet since 1981 (ITU, 2003) 168 In her work on the history of the internet in the American context, Janet Abbate discussed the position of the major telephone company (AT&T) on networking technologies if initially AT&T refused to collaborate with the ARPANet community because they did not see an opportunity for profit-making in it, from the 1980s, AT&T became increasingly interested in exploring ways of generating a profit out of the increasingly popular networks (see Abbate, 2001) l69These two IHAC reports, along with the government's response to them (The Government of Canada's Internet Strategy Government of Canada Internet Guide (1995), Building the Information Societ\> Moving Canada into the 21st Century (1997)) are part of the corpus of policy documents analyzed next Since the next chapter will engage with these reports, I will not dwell on them here. ''"Furthermore, according to Dorner's (2002) comprehensive study of the degrees of influence of the organizations involved in the information policy process, the industry (Stentor) along with Industry Canada were the two most influential actors throughout the stage of the first IHAC report 177 nationalism and global/ transnational imagery (Abramson & Raboy, 1994; Babe, 1996;
Barney, 2005; Morton, 1995; Young, 2003). Importantly, just as with the previous communication media, these tropes often co-existed in both harmony and tension with each other (Abramson & Raboy, 1994; Morton, 1995; Raboy, 1996).
The first IHAC report, Connection, Community, Content The Challenge of the
Information Highway (IHAC, 1995) enshrined free market as the driving force behind the information highway. Perhaps not surprisingly, the first IHAC report recommended
"exactly what the major industrial stakeholder constituting the bulk of the council's membership had hoped for: an approach that affirmed the undeniable urgency of facilitating technological development, in which primary control over the specifics of this development would be handed over to the private sector" (Barney, 2005, p. 48).
Public interest groups were disappointed by this report, arguing that the traditional concern with universal access was being pushed aside by economic considerations
(Buchwald, 2000; McDowell & Buchwald, 1997; Reddick, 1995). At times, such groups equally relied upon technological nationalism rhetoric to legitimize their grievances against the policy procedures and to challenge IHAC's legitimacy in 'speaking on behalf of the nation' (McDowell & Buchwald, 1997)'71.
I7lln particular, public interest groups struggled to redefine the topic of'essential services' on the internet in terms of access and affordabihty It is interesting here to compare the IHAC reports with the one produced by one of such public interest groups, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (which incidentally was one of the few ones invited to participate in the IHAC (Dormer, 2002)) Unlike the economic view of the first IHAC report, the PIAC report considered "cost implications, market receptiveness, the ability of consumers to make use of such services and the likely importance of such services to the ordinary Canadian, particularly the vulnerable consumer" (Reddick, 1995, p 2) The report concluded that "a large number of Canadians will be excluded from access to, and benefits of, the Information Highway The most important service for Canadians with existing networks and the Information Highway is a mandatory and affordable basic and essential service package" (Reddick, 1995, p 59) 178
Responding to these complaints, the government reconvened a second IHAC panel in May 1996, asking it to provide specific advice on four areas: economic growth, access, content, and learning and workplace (IHAC, 1997). The 1997 report Preparing
Canada for a Digital World included more of the social concerns highlighted by public interest groups (particularly the issue of universal access), but ultimately reiterated the economic framing of the internet (Rideout, 2002). The final recommendations reinforced the government's role as a 'manager' in charge of creating an environment able to foster competitive industry initiatives.
The government accepted the recommendations of both reports, assuming the role of nurturing the conditions for fostering technological innovation and providing funding where market forces failed to meet public interest objectives. The development of the
'information highway' was to be managed by the industry (Barney, 2005)172. Just as in the case of previous communication media debates, the tensions between public (access to basic service) and private interest, and between Canadian nationalism and international/ continental pulls continued to frame the information highway debate (Babe, 1990;
Barney, 2005; Young, 2003)173. 172 For example, the development of the publicly funded network for higher education and research (Canada's Advanced Research and Innovation Network, CANARIE) embodies the above-described ideological context within which the information highway came to be envisaged. A partnership between the industry, the government and the education sector, CANARIE was funded primarily from public funds, but it also incorporated contributions from the private sector. Its aim was to create high-speed connections between the local networks connecting higher education and research facilities across Canada. However, these networking projects were effectively operated by private actors, which prompted some critics to argue that in practice, CANARIE had been "decidedly commercial and industrial from the outset" (Barney, 2005, p. 44; also ITU 2003). From a discursive perspective, CANARIE was positioned as a 'national backbone' of the Canadian internet; in line with the recurring trope of communication technologies as both a threat to and an opportunity for the Canadian nation, CANARIE has been promoted as enabling the Canadian nation "to succeed in being a significant player in the intense international drive for enhanced productivity and competitiveness" (Hutchinson, 1993). '"For public policy scholars, these tensions constitute an ambivalence at the heart of the policy process in Canada: "ambivalence about the appropriate roles of the state and the market, about national and regional conceptions of political community, and about individualist and collectivist concepts of rights and responsibilities" (Tuohy. 1992, p. 4). This ambivalence is further seen as derived from Canada's specific 179
5.2.1.2 CRTC Decisions
In parallel to IHAC, CRTC also contributed to the development of a policy framework for the internet. In 1994, Industry Canada asked CRTC to hold public hearings on the implications of convergence and the removal of competition barriers between cable, telecommunications and other information providers. At stake here was the adequacy of the existing broadcasting and telecommunications regulative framework for the internet.
CRTC submitted its recommendations in 1995 to both the government and IHAC174. The report urged the relaxation of competition restrictions between cable, telephone and broadcasting companies; it also rehearsed the trope of nation-building through content, arguing that the information highway policy needs to strengthen Canada's existing cultural industry; but the report stopped short of recommending Cancon quotas for online content providers (CRTC, 1995). The most important contribution came, however, form the definitions: CRTC decided that alphanumeric text (namely, internet content which at the time was predominantly text-based) was not to be assimilated with broadcasting. In practice, these definitions allowed the telecoms to enter the programming and content services market (a market that traditionally was opened only to broadcasters and content providers), thus enabling the creation of cross-sectorial communication monopolies
(Babe, 1996, p. 299).
In 1998, CRTC held a second consultative process investigating the implications of new media for telecommunications and broadcasting. This process resulted in the 1999 demography and geography relation with the United States, the English/ French coexistence, and the federal/ provincial relations (also Babe, 2000) 174The 1995 report entitled Competition and Culture on Canada's Information Highway Managing the Realities of Transition has been included in the policy documents sample studied here 180
CRTC New Media Exemption Order, which confirmed that internet will not be regulated.
However, CRTC retained the power to regulate the retail of internet services where a case could be made of unjust discrimination; thus, from 2000 on, CRTC dealt primarily with unfair competition and tariff issues. In some cases, new internet-based serviced (e.g.
'internet lite' services, voice communications using internet protocol) required attention.
In others, smaller ISPs asked for the lowering of the internet tariffs practiced by wholesale internet service providers (such as Cogeco, Videotron, Bell, Rogers, Shaw and
Telus).
The latest regulative move dealt with the same technical aspects: the recent debates on net neutrality referred to the idea that the carrier should be neutral in respect to the content transmitted over its infrastructure. However, internet wholesale providers were increasingly interested in charging differential rates for the consumption of content through their networks. Although under the Telecommunications Act, a carrier is prohibited from controlling the content, many ISPs started shaping (throttling) the traffic
(see Barratt and Shade, 2007)175. In response to these practices, CRTC initiated a hearing process on the question of traffic management practices of ISPs in November 2008. The ensuing debate pitted the wholesale internet providers against small ISPs. The CRTC ruling clearly favoured wholesale providers, allowing them to engage in traffic management practices, but obliging them to disclose these practices (CRTC, 2009).
Although most of these regulatory approaches focused on infrastructure issues, the question of Canadian content on the internet was also under discussion. In general
'"internet throttling can occur at the level of end-users (when specific users find that their access to the internet is slowed down or even cut off), but also at the level of smaller ISPs (when wholesale internet providers restrict the traffic to and from the smaller ISP, with direct consequences on the end-user's upload/ download speeds). 181 however, the government's approach was to avoid any specific regulatory measures on content and to focus instead on providing funding for content creators176. The 1999 New
Media Exemption Order argued that there was sufficient Canadian presence online, making regulatory intervention unnecessary'77. This was also the preferred recommendation of technology experts, who warned that any attempts to interfere with content online would allegedly "undermine Canada's ability to take full advantage of the economic and social opportunities offered by the widespread use of Internet technology"
(Miller et al., 1999, p. 3; also Sirois & Forget, 1995, pp. 41-44).
By 2004 however, new voices advocating the need of regulatory provisions for online Canadian content gained visibility. As the advisory board reporting on the major federal funding project for online content argued, "it is naive to hope that Canadian online cultural producers can assert themselves, or even survive, based on the logic of revenue generation and profit. Therefore, the public sector in Canada, unquestionably, must be involved in funding" (Canadian Heritage, 2004). However, as the CCO funding program (see footnote above) was shut down in 2007/ 2008, this recommendation was not followed through. Stakeholders, particularly art and culture groups, began to ask for the imposition of Cancon rules for online programming, falling back onto the nationalist rhetoric of nation-building (see for instance Mochrie, 2009). As a result of these pressures, CRTC launched a new review process in 2008. In the end however, CRTC re-
l76The Canadian Culture Online (CCO) was a major federal funding initiative for the development of multimedia content. The project was placed under the Department of Canadian Heritage. '"Although CRTC did emphasize that more funding was needed for the development of French-based new media. 182 stated its decision not to interfere with content, but promised to review this decision in five years and urged for the creation of a national digital strategy178.
5.2.1.3 The Broadband Task Force
The last major policy initiative dealing with the internet discussed here is the creation of the 2001 National Broadband Task Force (NBTF). Industry Canada mandated NBTF to look at the transition to and extension of fibre optic networks across Canada. NBTF's report, pompously entitled The New National Dream: Networking the Nation for
Broadband Access, sought to justify the commitment to broadband by portraying it as a means to bridge the urban/ economic divide and to enhance education and health care opportunities. The task force proposed a strategy to ensure broadband universal access by
2004, particularly in rural and remote communities. This strategy consisted of two pillars: providing funding for network infrastructure and service investments, and providing funding for pilot community-oriented programs and for the delivery of electronic government services that would enhance the demand for infrastructure (thus making broadband investments 'profitable' enough for the private sector) (Mitchell, 2003).
Industry Canada accepted the recommendations, creating a new funding program for broadband development in rural and remote communities'79.
178 In November 2010, Industry Canada launched consultations for a digital national strategy. Since these policy events took place after this chapter was written, I have not included them in the research project. They remain however an interesting avenue for future research. 179 A variety of provincial broadband programs totalling C$81 lmillion have been developed and implemented by 2003 (ITU, 2003, p. 29). Following the 2002 Broadband for Rural and Northern Development program, a new round of funding was launched in September 2009. 183
5.3 Summary
The policy dynamics described here, as well as the Canadian intellectual thought on communication media as crucial to nation-building constitute the context within which the policy framework on information and communication technologies was proposed. In the next chapter, will come back to these policy dynamics in the analysis of the main federal reports on the so-called 'information highway'. The metaphor, meant to unite the different technological systems, infrastructures and applications involved in creating the internet as a network of networks, was widely spread in the collective imagination in the early to mid 1990s. As mentioned above, the social structure within which the information highway policy became debated prepares the ground for framing the internet in a dualistic way: infrastructure (understood from an economic perspective) and content
(understood from a cultural perspective). Although social concerns are also present, they are often associated with economic well-being.
What this chapter recommends, in my view, is that the formation of the internet as an object of discourse in the sphere of policy has to be understood as a symbolic drawing of boundaries (both national and global) around the medium. On the other hand, making the nation a category for conceptualizing communication media constitutes and reifies the 'Canadian space' (Nielsen & Jackson, 1991). In the context of policy-making, this choice of the 'nation' and the 'global' as categories through which the internet becomes discussed infuse strategic visions, laws and regulations; in other words, they infuse the tools through which policy-makers help form the material infrastructure within which our everyday life understanding and use of communication takes place. 184
Importantly, the economic potential of the internet in an allegedly global marketplace remains to be proven. The ICT sector is not necessarily one of the main sources of growth in Canada: in 2008, the sector contributed 4.8% of the Canadian gross domestic product and employed only 3.3% of the Canadian workforce (Industry Canada,
2009). Furthermore, the integration of the internet in everyday life is also quite different from the economic rhetoric framing the information highway: in spite of the touted economic benefits, most people use the internet to search for information, and to communicate and socialize with others. Several other predictions failed so far: the internet did not lead to the 'paperless office', travel was not replaced by videoconferencing, new media did not replace the traditional media, and the internet did not bring an end to shopping malls (Sciadas, 2006).
Nevertheless, the relation between the social construction of the internet in the context of policy and the ways in which the internet becomes a part of our 'social imaginaries' (Taylor, 2002) is not as simple. While it is possible to point to the discrepancy between the framing of the policy documents and the economic reality, this in itself does not say too much about the circulation of ideas and the development of a shared understanding of the social roles of a new medium. Moving on to the analysis of policy and media texts, this thesis will try to bring to light the discursive dynamics through which the internet becomes negotiated; just like in the past, nationalism retains its appeal in legitimizing particular articulations of the internet. By casting these articulations as reflections of'national interest' or 'national culture', social actors try to mobilize support for their own agendas; at the same time, this endurance of nationalism as a mechanism of legitimacy - but perhaps also as a mechanism of making sense of new 185 conditions and technologies - raises the question of how social structures and social imaginaries change. 186
Chapter 6: Nationalizing the Internet, Succeeding in the Global Economy: Analysis of Policy Reports
If, as argued in the Chapter 5, Canadian nationalism has often been seen as a major
discourse articulating communication media, the ways in which this articulation has
actually been proposed have not been addressed. This chapter looks precisely at this
dynamic, by focusing on the textual dimension of the main federal policy reports on the
internet and connecting it to wider discursive practices. As Robert Hodge and Gunther
Kress pointed out, specific texts and wider discursive practices are always involved in a
dialectic relation: "texts are both the material realization of systems of signs, and also the
site where change continually takes place" (1988, p. 6).
Thus, the policy documents are discussed here as sites where the formation of the
internet as an object of discourse and where the roles that the discourses of nationalism
and globalization play in this process can be investigated. As I will try to show, these
texts propose four types of conceptual relations through which the 'internet' and the
'nation' are brought together. Although these relations may appear as 'innocent'
formulations required by grammatical and syntactic rules, the analysis presented here
proposes that they become meaningful only by reference to nationalism. Importantly, the
'global' appears as an explanation of what lies outside the boundaries of the Canadian
(nation) state: an economic and largely unregulated dimension, permeated by obscure and
potentially threatening forces such as 'global/ foreign capital' or 'foreign (cultural)
content', within which Canada competes with other Western countries for techno-
economic leadership. 187
This chapter discusses how these conceptual relations were formed, in what contexts they appeared and for what purpose. After providing a brief overview of the sample of texts analyzed here, the context and general purpose of the reports is being described. The last section details the various articulations formed with these conceptual relations, mapping the various 'rules' (understood in a loose way) through which the internet becomes meaningful.
6.1 Overview of the analyzed data
As explained in Chapter 4, the policy documents analyzed here have been first scanned for the sentences and phrases where a conceptual relation of relevance was established.
This operation produced a total of 947 instances (for matters of expediency, referred to as textual units) distributed across the documents as shown in Table 5 below. The conceptual relations within these units were subsequently analyzed using the method described in Chapter 4. Thus, these relations were evaluated in terms of their strength
(Table 6) and tone (Table 7), as well as in terms of the topics within which they were used (Table 8).
From a quantitative perspective, the conceptual relations using keywords related to globalization discourses appeared to be less significant than those bringing the 'nation' and the 'internet' together. Thus, most of the conceptual relations articulating the internet in relation to both global and national issue were present in the 1994 Government
Strategy, the 1995 CRTC Report and the 1997 IHAC Report. 188
Table 5: Number of analyzed units in the policy reports
1994 1995 1995 1996 1997 1997 2001 Government IHAC CRTC Government Digitization IHAC NBTF Strategy Report Report Report Report Report Report Number of units analyzed 73 303 50 111 44 204 162 for 'nation' and 'internet' Number of units analyzed 27 65 12 18 4 42 23 for 'nation', 'internet' and 'global'
In most of these units, the conceptual relations were explicitly indicated or even emphasized. This may indicate that when these concepts appeared together, the relation established between them was semantically significant.
Table 6: The strength of the conceptual relations between 'internet' and 'nation'
1994 i 1995 IHAC 1995 1996 1997 1997 IHAC 2001 Government Report CRTC | Government Digitization Report NBTF Strategy I I Report J Report Report Report Relation implied 19 38 8 69 15 Relation stated 34 189 25 50 ^36 1 109 128 Relation 20 T45 u 23 0 26 19 emphasized J _ j_ __
Furthermore, these conceptual relations were presented in a predominantly positive or neutral manner; the conceptual relations had a negative connotations in cases when the internet was depicted as having the potential of negative effects on the nation. This seems consistent with the overall topics of the units within which these conceptual relations were used (see Table 8 below): quantitatively speaking, these units dealt with the positive aspects of the change associated with the internet.
Table 7: The tone of the conceptual relations between 'internet' and 'nation'
1994 1995 IHAC 1995 1996 1997 1997 IHAC 2001 Government Report CRTC Government Digitization Report NBTF Strategy Report Report , Report Report Positive relation 33 100 12 50 19 73 61 Neutral relation 36 190 38 59 17 123 92 189
Negative relation 5 19 J 2 J 3 8 10
Overall, these units dealt with a series of topics consistent across all documents.
Furthermore, these topics provide a general overview of the concerns and problematics discussed in the analyzed units'80. Most of these topics are part of the the over-arching theme of change and change management: for instance, topics such as 'Technoeconomic change', 'Benefits of the internet' or 'Opportunities for Canada' indicate that the discussion of the internet in these documents gravitated around the idea of change. While these topics are generally positive of the change, other topics such as 'Challenges to Canada',
'Costs' or 'Digital divides' construct the change as potentially problematic. Extrapolating solely on the basis of the frequency of topics presented in Table 8 below, it can be argued that the policy reports constructed the idea of'change' as resting on a set of dichotomous pairs such as: benefits/ challenges, Canadian/ international, national/ foreign and culture/ economy.
Table 8: Frequency of topics in the analyzed units across the policy reports
Policy Report Number of topics 1994 Government Strategy Internet in Canada (31 units); International context (13 units); Technoeconomic change (12 units); Content/ culture (10 units); Benefits of the internet to Canada (9 units); Development of a national policy (9 units); Opportunities of technoeconomic change for Canada (6 units); Access to the internet (3 units); Challenges of the technoeconomic change for Canada (3 units); Costs of the internet (3 units); Government/ citizens communication through the internet (3 units); Technical aspects/ standards of the internet (2 units); Copyright issues on the internet (1 unit); Digital divides (1 unit); Education and the internet (1 unit);
180 The reports worked within the agenda of the 1994 Government Strategy, which outlined several areas of interest: the regulatory framework, economic issues (jobs, innovation, investment), national culture, access to the internet, eolation between the relevant stakeholders (public and private sectors), competition and those technical aspects deemed crucial (interoperability, interconnectivity, privacy and security). The topics largely correspond to these thematic areas. 190
Healthcare and the internet (1 unit); Nation-building (1 unit); Privacy (1 unit). 1995 IHAC Report Development of a national policy (92 units); Opportunities of technoeconomic change for Canada (58 units); Content/ culture (53 units); Technoeconomic change (53 units); Internet in Canada (42 units); Access to the internet (19 units); Education and the internet (18 units); International context (16 units); Challenges of the technoeconomic change to Canada (14 units); Internet use (13 units); Technical aspects/ standards of the internet (11 units); Benefits of the internet to Canada (10 units); Roles of stakeholders in the development of the internet (9 units); Copyright (5 units); Work/ employment and the internet (5 units); Government/ citizens communication through the internet (4 units); Healthcare and the internet (4 units); Costs of the internet (1 unit); Digital divides (1 unit). 1995 CRTC Report Content/ culture (23 units); Internet in Canada (16 units); Technoeconomic change (7 units); Access to the internet (5 units); Challenges of the technoeconomic change to Canada (4 units); International context (3 units); Benefits of the technoeconomic change to Canada (2 units); Education and the internet (2 units); Development of a national policy (2 units); Digital divides (1 unit); Ownership of the infrastructure (1 unit); Technical aspects/ standards of the internet (1 unit). 1996 Government Response Benefits of the technoeconomic change to Canada (31 units); Internet in Canada (25 units); Content/ culture (13 units); International context (9 units); Technical aspects/ standards of the internet (9 units); Government/ citizens communication through the internet (8 units); Opportunities of technoeconomic change for Canada (6 units); Access to the internet (5 units); Challenges of the technoeconomic change to Canada (5 units); Technoeconomic change (5 units); Development of a national policy (4 units); Healthcare and the internet (2 units) Roles of the stakeholders in the development of the internet (2 units); Copyright (1 unit); Costs of the internet (1 unit); Nation-building (1 unit). 1997 IHAC Report Internet in Canada (75 units); Culture/ content (39 units); Opportunities of the technoeconomic change for Canada (27 units); International context (26 units); Development of a national policy (23 units); Access to the internet (22 units); Technoeconomic change (12 units); Education and the internet (11 units); Work/employment and the internet (11 units); Internet use (9 units); 191
Healthcare and the internet (5 units); Benefits of the technoeconomic change to Canada (4 units); Government/ citizens communication through the internet (4 units); Technical aspects/ standards of the internet (4 units); Copyright (3 units); Roles of stakeholders in the development of the internet (3 units); Challenges of the technoeconomic change to Canada (2 units); Cost of the internet (1 unit); Digital divides (1 unit). 1997 Digitization Report Content/ culture (35 units); Access to the internet (14 units); Internet use (6 units); Benefits of the technoeconomic change to Canada (3 units); Internet in Canada (2 units); Roles of the stakeholders in the development of the internet (2 units); Cost of the internet (1 unit); Digital divides (1 unit); International context (1 unit). 2001 NBTF Report Access to the internet (61 units); Internet in Canada (59 units); Benefits of the technoeconomic change to Canada (33 units); International context (18 units); Technoeconomic change (15 units); Education and the internet (8 units); Digital divides (7 units); Internet use (5 units); Healthcare and the internet (4 units); Roles of stakeholders in the development of the internet (4 units); Challenges of the technoeconomic change to Canada (3 units); Content/ culture (3 units); Foreign investment (3 units); Development of a national policy (2 units); Technical aspects/ standards of the internet (2 units); Work/ employment and the internet (2 units); Costs of the internet (1 unit); Opportunities of the technoeconomic change for Canada (1 unit).
6.2 Overview of the policy reports
It is not only that the seven policy reports analyzed here (see Table 1) deal with roughly the same topics (as can be seen from Table 8 above), but they also share a similar framing of the internet as the means for Canada's economic success on the global market.
However, each of these reports has slightly different functions within the context of policy-making processes; consequently, their articulation of the internet is influenced by the report's goal and position within the policy-making process. 192
The articulation of the internet in terms of a technoeconomic change bringing
along both opportunities and challenges to Canada has been set by the 1994 Government
Strategy, the first official document signalling the transformation of this communication medium into an object of policy (Industry Canada, 1994). The strategy outlined those
aspects of the internet deemed central by the government: economic growth, preservation
of national sovereignty and cultural identity, and access to the new medium. The
document introduced the internet through two metaphors: 'information highway' and
'information society/ economy'; both relied on wider discourses of the 'information age'
(see Chapter 1).
To reiterate, these discourses espoused a technologically deterministic view to
technology as an inevitable force of progress, understood primarily in economic terms, to
which each social actor had to adapt or risk being left behind (Mattelart, 2002; Mosco,
2001, 2005). As Vincent Mosco (2001, 2005) observed, this view rests on false or
unfulfilled promises (or myths) about the power of information and communication
technologies to create a perfect world where history and distance become irrelevant. The
economic forces behind such myths, Mosco argued, seek to legitimize a view of the
world where economic relations have changed from manufacturing to services, from a
skilled elite to a large highly-educated workforce, and "from a society led by elites in
finance capital to a more egalitarian society led by knowledge workers" (2005, p. 142).
The 1994 Government Strategy reproduced this myth, legitimizing the
construction of the internet as an object of policy by recourse to the ideas of economic
benefits for the entire Canadian nation, and not just for a few elites. In this process,
'national interest' was reframed as primarily economic, but at the same time, economic 193 interests were brought in line with and placed under the rather general umbrella of
'national interest'. Nationalism helped to legitimize both policy intervention in relation to the internet181, and the spatial borders and symbolic boundaries within which the internet should be understood. As Marco Adria noted, this introduces a "nationalist logic of organizing" resources within space (2010, p. 6).
The ensuing reports were produced by different types of policy actors: a regulative body overseeing the implementation of the existing legal framework on communications (CRTC) and three different advisory bodies (IHAC, the Task Force on
Digitization and NBTF). Although appointed by the government, the latter could only make recommendations. As such, the reports were more normative: they constructed what the regulative framework "should be", in an attempt to mobilize the support of not only the general public, but also of the political elite. At the same time, by virtue of their composition, these consultative bodies also had to reconcile a plurality of interests and agendas around the internet within themselves. Nationalism was the main discourse harmonizing and legitimizing the recommendations made by these bodies; it helped to discursively articulate those interests with the mandate provided by the government, by enrolling them within the over-arching theme of'national interest'.
The 1995 IHAC Report (IHAC 1995) and the 1995 CRTC Report (CRTC 1995) were the first to provide policy recommendations. The 1995 IHAC Report directly responded to the federal government's agenda, reiterating its values, principles and objectives. As such, the report often shifted between a descriptive style, used in listing
181 The relation between information technology, and policy-making is a complex one On the one hand, information technology has increasingly become an object of policy and public funding, particularly in a military context On the other hand, the developers associated with the ARPANET, the formally recognized 'first internet', worked from the premise of an open system, outside of the sphere of regulation 194 the alleged benefits of the information highway, and a normative style, used when making recommendations. Importantly, the report prescribed particular roles for the government, the industry and the citizens in relation to the development of the internet; in this case, the reliance on nationalism sought to mobilize people around these roles and legitimize the recommendations.
The 1995 CRTC Report addressed the different question of the impact of the existing regulation on the development of the information highway and vice-versa. The
CRTC had been mandated to examine whether the broadcasting and the telecommunications sectors should be allowed to compete, and whether it was still necessary to preserve the Canadian content quota rules. Historically, these issues had shaped the institutional landscape of communication media in Canada, and as such many actors (broadcasters, telecommunication companies, cultural institutions, artists etc.) had a vested interest in them; the CRTC had to propose a solution that could be made acceptable to everyone, while at the same time working within the economic agenda of the 1994 Government Strategy. The CRTC concluded that while the private sector should be encouraged to become the developer of the 'Information Highway', this development had to reflect 'Canadian values'. Even if those values remained elusive (and as such, their real impact on economic aspects was debatable), nationalism helped articulate economic activities as national achievements, while economic goals and values were in turn transformed into 'Canadian achievements'.
The federal government responded to the 1995IHAC Report in the 1996
Government Response paper (Industry Canada, 1996), laying out an action plan while also extensively describing the benefits, opportunities and challenges of the allegedly 195 impending technoeconomic change brought by the internet. The paper continued the construction of the internet as a primarily economic activity, where the federal government's role was that of establishing the conditions within which this economic activity can become profitable. Again, these economic aspects were defined as benefiting the nation; by relying on nationalism, the government was yet again able to position its policy work on the internet as a response to and a protection of Canadian needs.
The 1997 Task Force on Digitization Report (Industry Canada 1997) was the result of a task force proposed by IHAC and mandated to focus on the types of content that needed to be digitized. The recommendations of this task force were thus crucial in terms of the distribution of resources (funding) for the development of Canadian content online. This report was more technical than the others, and as such nationalism appeared to be less needed to explain or legitimize decisions. Nevertheless, nationalism remained the 'banal' (Billig, 1995) principle informing the classification of the content to be digitized (i.e. the priority for digitization processes was the 'Canadian content').
As discussed in Chapter 5, IHAC was reconvened in 1996 to address some of the concerns voiced by the critics of the first report. The 1997 IHAC Report (IHAC, 1997) re-asserted the frames and principles outlined by the 1994 Government Strategy and the
1995 IHAC Report: it preserved the same economic understanding of the internet, but it also tried to pay more attention to cultural and social issues (e.g. ensuring access to the internet, ensuring sufficient Canadian content online). Interestingly, the report also marked the transition from the 'information highway' metaphor to simply 'the internet'.
Overall, the report effectively continued the effort to enrol the different actors within the government's articulation of the 'information society' as an economic opportunity able to 196 establish Canada as a 'world leader' and as a competitive economic actor on the market of cultural and ICT goods.
The last policy document analyzed here, the 2001 National Broadband Task
Force Report (Industry Canada, 2001) was the result of a task force appointed by the government to make recommendations on the strategy for upgrading the internet's infrastructure. The task force followed the federal government's commitment to make broadband available all over Canada. From the beginning, the task force constructed this rather technical objective in nationalist terms: broadband was the 'new national dream', while the report showcased the strategic importance of high-speed internet infrastructure for the nation as a whole. The metaphor of the 'Information Highway' was replaced by the syntagm 'internet for all Canadians/ Canadian communities', pointing to a discursive shift from emphasizing economic aspects to 'social entitlements' (i.e. the 'right' of internet users to access to high-speed infrastructure). Thus, the lack of access to technology was presented as something that went against Canadian values, as it allegedly created divides within the nation, failing to ensure the promise of equality of opportunity; this directly appealed to the traditional discourse of Canadian nationalism, focused on social justice and equality for all citizens. Furthermore, the report also rehearsed the traditional image of communication media as crucial to the creation/ maintenance of the Canadian nation
(see Chapter 4; also Adria, 2010).
6.3 The conceptual relations
The relevant units identified in the policy reports were subsequently analyzed in terms of the conceptual relations that they used in constructing the internet as an object of 197 discourse in relation to nationalism and globalization discourses. These conceptual relations brought together the concepts of the 'internet' and the 'nation' and/or the 'global'; in line with the Foucaultian framework, these relations have been understood as delimiting, describing and prescribing what the 'internet' is, how it should look and what it should do. Overall, these conceptual relations supported and overlapped with each other, forming networks proposing particular articulations of the internet.
The four types of conceptual relations are:
• Relations of existence (the existence of one concept is linked to the other). These
relations took two major forms: the internet in Canada and in other countries, and
the presence of 'Canada', as a collective actor, on the internet. Through the first
relation, national boundaries were drawn around the internet, which was then
reified as a national resource; the second one constructed the internet as a virtual
space that the nation had to appropriate.
• Relations of qualification (one concept qualifies the other). These relations
delimited the internet as either 'national' or 'global'. This delimitation involved not
only the physical presence of the infrastructure, but also the level of content and
even use.
• Relations of possession (one concept is portrayed as belonging to the other). In
this case, the internet was constructed as an object of the nation. Again, the
internet became positioned as a national resource.
• Relations of agency (one concept is portrayed as the agent doing something to
the other). In this case, both the 'nation' and the 'internet' were proposed as agents
doing something to each other. Interestingly, the 'global' was not treated in the 198
same way; instead, the 'global' remained portrayed as a context within which the
two 'agents' influenced each other.
Importantly however, these relations were used in a variety of articulations, which will be discussed next. These articulations have to be understood however in relation to the overall purpose of the policy documents analyzed here (section 6.2); in this sense, these conceptual relations are the basic mechanisms through which the policy intervention becomes legitimized as reflecting and preserving 'national interest' against the background of a 'global' marketplace, characterized by a competitive race between nations.
6.3.1 Relations of existence
To reiterate, this relation depicts one concept as an entity existing within the context of the other (a part-whole relation). The policy papers propose two types of relations of existence, further explored in more detail below:
A). The internet in Canada (and in other countries);
B). Canada on the internet.
By claiming to describe relations between 'objects' that exist in world, these relations institute a system of classification through which the internet, as well as society, is understood. This classification relies on the category of the 'nation' to select and group not only people, but also objects. However, the category itself is meaningful only by reference to the discourse that (in)forms it in the first place'82. Thus, making sense of the 1821 realize that this argument may come across as denying the material aspect of discourses This is not my intention For, if one espouses the Foucaultian model, the relation between discourses (or even language in general) and the material infrastructure is a dialectical one The more popular a system of classification becomes, the more it shapes the material infrastructure, in turn, this infrastructure comes to recommend the categories according to which we classify the world as 'natural' 199 concept 'Canada' relies upon our response, as readers, to the interpellative power of the word: 'Canada' may mean simply a country among other countries on the map, or 'our home', with specific features that we, as members, share and cherish. In the latter case, nationalism becomes a background of meaning which helps anchor the concept of the
'internet' within a known - and thus meaningful - version of the social world.
A). The internet in Canada (and in other countries)
This conceptual relation is used primarily in the 1994 Government Strategy, the 1995
IHAC Report, the 1997IHAC Report and the 2001 NBTF Report. In its most common form, this relation seems to refer to spatial organization, as in these underlined phrases183:
"There are many community networks and freenets in municipalities across
Canada, especially in urban areas" (1997 IHAC, U89).
"The internet has grown and developed in Canada as a result of a cooperative
effort between public and private sectors" (1997 IHAC, U52).
This spatial form can be described as: the internet (or the 'community networks and freenets') in Canada. This may seem to indicate a logical and grammatical operation of locating one object (the internet) into space. The phrases appear to describe a reality-out- there which can be observed (and thus confirmed as a 'fact') by anyone.
Yet, the cooptation of location and space by ideology - specifically within the context of nationalism - is never a simple matter. Geographical space is an intrinsic element of the nation's sovereignty and self-determination; it also comes to be associated with the idea of'home' as a symbol of security and familiarity, and thus invested with
1831 have underlined passages in the quotes provided as examples to indicate the particular linguistic choices that reflect the conceptual relation under discussion. 200 emotions (Morley, 2000). As Colin Williams notes, nationalism intertwines the
"'imperative' of spatial location and geographical distribution" of people (and, in this case, of technologies) with the question of political control of that location (1994, p. 58).
The use of'Canada' as an indicator of location is never just a geographical reference; it is often understood in relation to the use of other references pointing to the idea of geographical space as an aspect of the nation, such as 'our country', 'our geography' or 'our homeland'. The nation works as principle of classification: the familiar place of the nation is juxtaposed with the image of'other countries'. Although the reference to the 'others' is less frequent in the case of this conceptual relation, it points to a global world made of different countries. Importantly, the countries that are included in this 'global' world are the economically developed ones, against which the policy-makers juxtapose the need for Canada to be competitive184. To a great extent, the reference to the
'global' hides away the fact that as a state, Canada has always had international economic relations with most of these countries (and particularly the United States and the United
Kingdom).
Depicted as an infrastructure, the internet can be positioned within and delimited by the borders of the nation-state. Through this operation, the internet can be classified as
'national' and juxtaposed against other 'national internets'. On the other hand, the use of deictics such as 'Canada' or 'our country' versus 'other countries' construct "the nation as a homogeneous collective that the (implied) reader is positioned as being a member of
(Bishop and Jaworski, 2003, p. 244; also Higgins, 2004).
184 The 'other countries' the reports reference in the context of this relation are the United States, the member states of the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan and Korea. As we shall see next, these countries come up in the context of other conceptual relations, in which case they constitute the 'global' background against which Canada measures its performance. 201
Yet, by virtue of the nature of these reports, Canada is already implied as a context within which the policy on the internet is developed. The explicit references has thus an emphatic role: the specification 'in Canada' is not merely an indication of geographical location, but also a way of introducing order within a novel concept such as the internet, by inscribing it within the pre-existing geo-political structures. This relation facilitates the transition from seeing the internet as an object within Canada to seeing it as a 'Canadian object'; the qualification is significant in terms of its ideological effects (see section 6.3.2). The role of this relation of existence is that of legitimizing the policy intervention by firmly and inconspicuously entrenching the internet as a national resource. Delimited as a 'national' infrastructure, the internet becomes manageable from the vantage point of policy-making activities.
B). Canada on the Internet
In this relation, the internet is no longer discussed as an infrastructure, but as a cultural/ virtual space where the nation, as a collective actor, has to be physically present or culturally represented. Thus, the 'Canadian presence' online is depicted in terms of a virtual location that is visited by Canadians, or as a 'Canadian space' online formed through the digitization of cultural content. Thus, the internet becomes a space that the
Canadian nation, in competition with other nations, has to claim for itself. Creating a policy around the internet becomes associated with a race between nations to 'colonize' the internet.
"The goal will be to accelerate the rate at which Canadians move onto the
Information Highway" (1996 Government Response, U93). 202
"These Canadians are all travelling the Information Highway" (1995 IHAC
Report, U46).
"the fundamental imperative for a strong Canadian presence on the Information
Highway" (1995 IHAC Report, U107).
Thus, the internet can be 'travelled', while actors, objects or even immaterial things like a
'Canadian presence' can exist within this space. In some cases, this relation takes the form of a description: the nation simply is in the virtual space. In other instances however, this relation takes on a normative form: the nation's presence becomes a 'goal' or a
'fundamental imperative'. The internet-as-space becomes understood through the lens of competition between countries; thus, where in the geo-political world, the nation as a principle of organization brought along the promise of a stable and peaceful international system (see section 2.1.2.2), the 'global' world is one of economic competition among countries. Thus, the 'Canadianization' of the internet-as-space, the process through which the internet's "use, operation and impact" would come to "respect and reflect the values that Canadians hold both as individuals and as a society" (1995 IHAC report, U108), appears as a necessary aspect of Canada's competitiveness in the 'global' world.
Furthermore, this process of Canadianization is often portrayed as an act of collective will: as the 1995 IHAC Report explained, it is necessary that policy makers
"[djetermine the kind of society we want to live in and ensure that this vision is reflected on the Information Highway as we work for the values we care about" (U36). Canada's presence on the internet becomes an act of agency through which the nation acts within this 'global' world. Perhaps not surprisingly then, the 'Canadianization' of the internet becomes a token of the nation's will to power and success in a global world. As we shall 203 see next, the internet appears as a technology opening up a choice for the nation with an either/ or choice: either become an active creator and user of the internet, or remain a passive consumer of it.
This rhetorical juxtaposition of the pairs creator and user/ passive consumer is an interesting one: in her own analysis of the IHAC reports, Naomi Fraser (2007) has argued that the reports attempt to inscribe citizens into 'model (ICT) user' roles. This, Fraser further noted, marks a change in the techniques of government, where being 'a good citizen' means adopting the roles prescribed by the government in relation to becoming a skilled labour force. Such roles transform citizens into a workforce for the information economy; nationalism serves to mask this transformation: being a 'model user' becomes associated with being a good Canadian, while participation in the technoeconomic change is re-casted as a performance of one's national identity. In other words, embracing the technoeconomic change appears as both an individual and a national duty.
6.3.2 Relations of qualification
A qualifier is a word that attributes a quality or modifies a noun or a verb. Here, qualification refers to the relation between the concepts under investigation in which one concept functions as an attribute of the other. Qualification thus takes the following forms:
A), the internet is qualified as 'national', as in 'Canadian internet', 'Canadian
Information Highway', 'national broadband backbone';
B). the internet is qualified as 'global', as in 'global internet'. 204
Since in the policy documents, neither the terms 'Canadian' or 'global' are described or discussed in terms of what the processes that they refer to, their particular meaning remains open to interpretation. Each reader is able to rely on their own versions of what
'Canadian'/ 'global' means, largely without undermining the argument that this relation supports. However, readers are not entirely free to choose anything they want, since the texts guide them through hints and fragmentary explanations; for example, these hints can range from referring to the 'nation' in terms of 'common values' to explicitly mentioning equality as one such value.
Importantly, these relations of qualification construct the internet along the lines
'Canadian'/ 'global'. The pair is not necessarily disjunctive: in fact, the predominant portrayal of the 'global' is that of an economic environment for the nation.
A). The Canadian Internet
This conceptual relation is used in all reports, taking two main forms: the internet can be
'Canadian' in terms of infrastructure, or in terms of content. The qualification is not a topic in itself (i.e. the documents do not explicitly address how the internet can be
'Canadian'); rather, it becomes condensed into a noun-phrase, used to constantly refer to the internet.
Infrastructure: As an infrastructure, the internet can be 'Canadian' in terms of its physical existence within the geographic boundaries of the nation-state (discussed in section 6.3.1), or in terms of its subsequent development according to national goals and values. In the latter case, the emphasis is placed on coming to an agreement on how the 205 internet should be developed, who should be involved in this development and for what purpose. Importantly, this development is explicitly associated with the traditional theme of technology linking the nation: as the 1995 CRTC Report explained, communications networks have been central to Canada's "economic and cultural sovereignty" and the policy efforts around them "have created a North American country with distinctive values" (U6). Consequently, the 'Canadian internet' has to be built to reflect and serve the interests of'all Canadians': "The Canadian information highway will be built and operated by the private sector within a strategy that meets Canada's goals and objectives"
(1994 Government Strategy, U36).
The qualifier 'Canadian' symbolically connects the internet to the nation: as the two become one single noun-phrase, the idea of the internet semantically overlaps to that of the nation as bounded spaces delimiting and containing not only identities, but also moral and cultural universes. The internet becomes both an object and a reflection of the nation. As the 1997 Government Response stated, "...the Information Highway must strengthen the social fabric that underlies a healthy economy and the quality of all our lives together" (U69). Thus, the internet becomes 'Canadian' in the process of its development by Canadian stakeholders and for Canadians purposes.
Content: In this case, the relation of qualification refers to the internet in terms of its content. As with the radio and television, this content is approached from the vantage point of the nation: it constitutes the 'national culture' transmitted through that particular medium. However, the problematic of content within the policy context has shifted from an emphasis on nation-building to an emphasis on national culture as an economic 206 product (Edwardson 2008). Perhaps not surprisingly then, the policy reports rely on both types of articulations.
Content-as-culture: In this first case, the conceptual relation constructs the 'Canadian internet' as a space of dialogue, where individuals across the nation come together and share their culture. This relation overlaps with one of the relations of existence described above: the Canadian presence on the internet. Both effectively position the internet as a space to be 'Canadianized' through culture.
For the 1994 Government Strategy and the 1997 Digitization Report, this
'Canadianization' of the internet takes place by digitizing the pre-existing 'Canadian cultural holdings'. The content under discussion here is the one produced by established cultural institutions, such as Canadian museums, archives and government collections, the Canadian education system, Canadian artists, the Canadian broadcasting and film institutions (particularly CBC and NBF) and even the multimedia industry185.
Furthermore, this content is defined in relation to two core 'national' values: multiculturalism and bilingualism186.
Canadian content on the internet is always formulated as a strong requirement.
The reasons of this normativity rely on both the discourse of Canadian cultural
185 The 1995 IHAC report also describes cultural content as produced by individual Canadians on the Information Highway. The role of individual citizens is addressed further in the discussion and can be understood in relation to Naomi Fraser's (2007) discussion of the IHAC reports as prescribing a 'model user role' through which citizens are incorporated into both economic and national orders. 186 Interestingly, 'French content' is defined along linguistic lines, while 'Aboriginal content' is defined along ethnic lines. Thus, the prescription for the development of'French content' refers mostly to the obligation of cultural institutions (and of the federal government) to provide bilingual content. The prescription for 'Aboriginal content1 refers mostly to allocation of funds that Aboriginal communities can use to develop multimedia applications. The reference to the two communities is not accidental, as both are important political constituencies to be appeased and accommodated under the national policy framework. 207 nationalism, which equates the nation with a common culture, and on the previous discussions on the role of content in media policy. Culture, and by extension the nation, are depicted as an on-going 'dialogue' through which the nation itself comes into being187: for example, the 1997 Government Response noted the necessity of "Canadian content on the Information Highway, thereby strengthening our ongoing national cultural dialogue and creating economic growth and jobs" (U9). Similarly, the 1995 IHAC Report defined culture as "a fundamental national process: the ongoing dialogue focusing a diverse spectrum of perspectives into a shared vision of Canada" (U12).
The image of culture as a 'dialogue' remains however problematic; it invokes an image of the nation as a space where shared values naturally infuse the interactions and where a consensus is unproblematically established. Considerations of power and inequality, as well as the thorny question of the status of French Canadians and of immigrants (and their values) are simultaneously marginalized and placed under the wider umbrella of'Canadian unity'. For example, the 1997 IHAC Report legitimized its policy recommendations around 'Canadian content' by arguing that they will ultimately
"reinvigorate the cultural dialogue essential to Canadian unity" (U199).
Thus, 'Canadian content' online becomes represented as a morally satisfying necessity; an enabler of national, local and regional bonds (1997 IHAC report, U78); and a site of "a shared national consciousness and informed citizenship" (1997 Digitization
Report, U27). This relation of qualification also positions the 'nation' as a criterion
187 While Canadian nationalism does not portray culture as a consequence of common descent, this does not necessarily mean that culture is not seen as homogeneous and co-extensive to the nation; or that it is not a mechanism of classification and exclusion of non-members. 208
(in)forming the future development of the internet; in that sense, through the process of building the internet, the latter also becomes a national space.
Foreign content: Occasionally, the reports juxtapose 'Canadian content' with 'foreign content'. In such cases, the image of the 'foreign' strengthens the articulation of internet as crucial to the survival of the nation. The word 'foreign' however has different connotations from 'global' (as in 'global internet'): as something external to the nation, and thus as something unknown, the qualifier 'foreign' often invokes anxiety over difference. This anxiety refers primarily to the fear that the nation (and its members by extension) will loose the capacity to express its individuality (its culture) in a global space dominated by the reproduction of'foreign cultural content'. For example, in the following quote, cultural content becomes linked to a 'global system' within which the reproduction of Canadian culture is potentially under threat:
"Linking Canadians to a global system of interactive media creates at once
opportunity and threat to the promotion of Canadian cultural content... Yet,
maintaining and promoting a distinctive Canadian cultural presence will continue
to be a challenge" (1995 IHAC report, U62).
Against the background of this problematic 'global' space, the pair foreign/ Canadian legitimizes policy-making as the means to creating a positive environment where
'Canadian content' can flourish. Furthermore, policy-making is positioned as the will of
Canadians, as the latter allegedly "do not want to see the Canadian Information Highway used to distribute mostly foreign products and services" (1995 IHAC report, U206)'88. In l88As discussed in Chapter 5, this 'will' to consume Canadian culture has often been destabilized by the realization that Canadians often consume more "American content", especially on television. The 209 this example, the image of the 'national internet' is compared to the image of the 'foreign' elements permeating the body of the nation. As the latter is clearly a 'threat', the protection of this 'national internet' becomes a necessity.
Canadian content as product: In its economic re-articulation, the theme of'Canadian content' becomes a mechanism of legitimizing the distribution of public resources to industry actors. Nationalism, along with a neo-liberal understanding of the 'global' as a self-regulating market, work together in creating the basis of legitimacy, recommending a specific view of the 'nation' as an economic enabler and attempting to discursively bring economic dynamics under national control.
In this case, content encompasses not only digitized cultural artifacts, but also software, databanks, digital services and multimedia products. Yet, although the emphasis is now on the production, distribution and consumption of these products and services, the qualifier 'Canadian' remains the principle according to which these products and services should be classified. While culture remains an important aspect of both internet content and the nation, it also takes on an economic role: 'Canadian content' becomes akin to a brand name able to attract profits, jobs and economic competitiveness for the nation.
This articulation draws its legitimacy from overimposing an economic goal onto the discourse of nationalism. As a product, content is expected to bring a profit;
'Canadian content' is understood and approached as an object of marketplace dynamics.
However, its 'Canadianess' simultaneously makes it a national element. Just as culture is discussion of foreign/ Canadian content thus inevitably draws from the longstanding policy debates on the role of content in the maintenance of the nation both the output of a nation, as well as the mechanism through which the nation is built, content-as-product is at once a means to profit and a national cultural element. Thus, nationalism can be seen here as instilling a certain morality within economic mechanisms: while profit-making and free markets remain appropriate strategies for ordering economic activities, they are moral only to the extent that they contribute to nation-building processes. Nation-building becomes best served by profit-driven economic exchange, while nationalism becomes the moral order with which this exchange has to comply. Thus, policy must:
"...ensure that the Information Highway makes room for Canada's cultural
distinctiveness and linguistic duality. To this end, we examine the best means of
supporting the production, distribution and promotion of Canadian content
products and services in a global competitive environment, both as a source of
jobs and way to strengthen our national, regional and local communities" (1997
IHAC Report, U26).
In this case, the global dimension is no longer a threat, but an opportunity. 'Canadian content' can be marketed and sold not only domestically, but also outside the economic space of Canada, which brings along the possibility of profit and of growth. This economic image of the global is predominant within the policy reports; Canada's leadership on this global market, enabled by 'Canadian content', is a core locus of national pride. Thus, economic competitiveness becomes depicted as both a goal to be attained and as an already existing position that requires further public support. The relation of qualification becomes part of a conditional relation: if Canadian content is not developed, then Canada will no longer be able to compete globally. The solution 211 recommended by the reports is to create quality 'Canadian products' and to ensure their worldwide distribution.
Importantly, this relation defines particular roles for the government, who has to create a suitable economic environment, for the industry, who is expected to develop
'Canadian content', and for citizens, who are expected to be both developers of this content and consumers of it. In other words, the articulation of the internet as a space for
Canadian culture-as-product crafts a new source of authority for policy-making: that of fostering a national context within which economic activity can be profitable; in turn, this economic layer transforms the nation into a global leader, reinforcing national belonging and pride. This dynamic can not be divorced from what Naomi Fraser (2007) has called the reframining of the practices of government. As Allen Scott observed, this shift reflects the increasing dominance of a neo-liberal rationality, where "the realm of human culture as a whole is increasingly subject to commodification, i.e. supplied through profit-making institutions in decentralized markets" (1997, p. 323; also Mosco, 2001,
2005).
B). The Global Internet
This relation of qualification appears mostly in the 1995IHAC Report and the 1997
Government Response to it. It constructs the internet as a carrier that is 'global' in terms of its infrastructure and reach. The qualifiers 'global', 'worldwide' or 'international' are often used in opposition to 'Canadian' or 'domestic', creating an image of the 'global' as an alternative to the 'national', or as an environment made up of different 'national' units. 212
Thus, the 'global internet' becomes meaningful in relation to both cooperation and competition among nations.
One of the main articulations which rests on this relation of qualification is that of technology as international. The 1994 Government Strategy describes the internet as international and interconnected networks that link users in "the United States, Canada and 150 other countries" (U40). The internet appears here as a technology that connects people within and across nation-states189. Interestingly enough, this international aspect of the internet is primarily positive: it is a process of cooperation among nation-states on technical matters. In this case, the internet appears as a network of national networks, connected to each other. This further creates the context for cooperation, since all nation- states have to deal with the internet's alleged propensity to cut across national boundaries.
Just like the geopolitical order of nation-states necessarily required these states to cooperate with each other (since for national sovereignty to be meaningful, it has to be recognized and protected by other nation-states as well), the international dimension of technology requires collaboration among states.
From this perspective, the images of the 'international internet' and that of the
'global internet' are particularly interesting, since the latter seems to always erase the cooperative dimensions of the former (Mattelart, 2002). The policy reports associate the
'global internet1 to the idea of competition among states: as the 1995 IHAC Report announced, "the global race is on to develop the Information Highway", announces the
1995 IHAC report (U170). Yet, as already mentioned, this is 'global race' is one of the
l89One has to wonder whether the presence of the prefix "inter" (meaning between or among) does not bring the two concepts together: an international world or an interconnected world designate a world formed of distinct yet comparable elements that enter some sort of a relation with each other, forming a whole. 213 already privileged states; as Mattlerat (2002) argued, such portrayals of the 'global' often erase the exploitation or the inequality upon which they rest.
Thus, the 'global' always brings along an economic positioning of the internet.
Importantly, this economic dimension is in itself a space of both opportunity and threat for the nation: "Canada faces both opportunity and threat in the evolving global
Information Highway" (1995 IHAC Report, U138). On the one hand, this ambivalence legitimizes policy-making actions (and in particular, the policy goal of creating a positive environment for the industry). On the other hand, this ambivalence provides the context of a specific type of national pride: pride in technological accomplishments.
6.3.3 Relations of possession/ determination
This relation positions the internet and related sectors as an object of Canada, as in:
'Canada's information infrastructure', 'Canada's Information Highway', 'Canada's broadband networks' or 'Canada's ICT sector'. From a grammatical perspective, this form of genitive is also referred to as a determiner genitive or a specifying/ classifying genitive: "the possessor ... functions like the definite article... From a cognitive pragmatic and semantic point of view the possessor can be viewed as an 'anchor' that narrows down the referent of the [noun phrase]" (Rosenbach, 2006, p. 80). In other words, 'Canada's internet' can only be rephrased as 'the internet of Canada', where the article 'the' indicates we are talking about a specific internet. What determines or classifies this internet, rendering it specific, is precisely the possessor - Canada.
The genitive form works in tandem with the relation of qualification ('the
Canadian internet'); both make an unknown object more comprehensible, by situating it 214 within a national context. This also means that Canada can be imagined as both a geographical place and a possessor - an agent that 'has' the internet. The policy reports use the genitive in relation to two major contexts: to promote the alleged economic opportunities brought by the internet and to describe the course of action required to develop 'Canada's information highway'. Both contexts overlap to a great extent with the conceptual relations discussed so far.
In the first context, the genitive is used to describe the economic opportunities allegedly opened up by 'Canada's internet': "...the enormous enabling power of Canada's
Information Highway can be harnessed to create jobs and open up new realms of economic possibility and competitiveness for Canadian firms, small and large, in every sector of the Canadian economy" (1997 Government Response, U12). Since this remains however only a potential, steering the development of the internet in the right direction becomes crucial; the suggestion of being able to control the future and make it economically profitable legitimizes particular policies as representing the 'national interest'. Interestingly enough, these policies are referred to in one instance as a 'blueprint'
(1995 IHAC Report, U161), suggesting that the potential of the internet is something to be managed and transformed into an opportunity for the nation190. The 'blueprint' for
'Canada's Information Highway' remains primarily a strategy of re-distributing resources toward the industry, in order to encourage the latter to develop the 'Canadian internet'.
In the second case, the genitive is used to refer to a set of pre-existing and new technological elements that form a 'network of networks' situated in Canada and serving
190 Incidentally, this metaphor is very common in the field of genetics, where genes have often been described as 'blueprints' for human beings. In that context, it has similarly been connected to the idea of building an organism and controlling it through a manipulation of its genes/ parts during the building stage (e.g. Conditetal., 2002). 215
Canadian interests. Importantly, the policy reports connect the significance of 'Canada's internet' to its adoption by Canadians. The latter are urged to get involved; the appeal - the mobilizing factor - is not solely in the promises of a new technologies, but in the fact that these technologies are/ will become a national resource.
The internet is by no means a clear 'thing'; it is neither one single artifact or technology. As the reports themselves emphasize, it is a 'network of networks', a process of bringing together telecommunication and broadcasting, but also a symbolic dimension and a practice. Yet, both the qualification and the genitive operate a conceptual pseudo- clarification of the concept: the 'internet' becomes known and can be imagined through its association (qualification, classification) with the nation.
6.3.4 Relations of agency
In this conceptual relation, one concept becomes rendered as an actor doing something to the other. Such relations of agency are important in terms of how the actors and their mutual impact are described, what social arrangements these descriptions seem to recommend, and who is seen as benefiting from them. The agency relations used in the policy documents fall into two main categories:
A), the nation, as a collective agent, affects the internet;
B). the internet affects the nation.
Relation A overlaps to a great extent with the other conceptual relations described above
(existence, qualification, possession); like them, it provides a context for understanding the 'internet'. Relation B articulates the internet in a technologically deterministic manner, as a cause of a global technoeconomic change. I will discuss each of them next. 216
A). The nation as an agent: the nation builds the internet
This relation is primarily used to build the legitimacy of the policy proposals and to prescribe roles for each of the key actors: government, industry and citizens. It positions these actors as representatives of the nation, in charge of building a technology
(infrastructure, content, use) that reflects national values and meets the goals of the nation. In so doing, this conceptual relation makes it possible to imagine the internet as an object that is not only physically situated within the national space, but that is also imprinted with national values. Associating artifacts with national features and values is one of the common strategies through which banal nationalism becomes "ingrained in unreflexive patterns of social life, stitched into the experience and the assumptions of the everyday" (Edensor, 2002, p. 10; see Chapter 2).
This conceptual relation adds to the discursive nationalization of the internet described so far. This 'Canadianization' takes place in the process of building the
'Canadian internet' as a reflection of national values: as the 1994 Government Strategy document described, the internet has to be "uniquely Canadian, respecting our regulatory history, our economic realities, our market size, our industry structures, our international context and our unique cultural and sovereignty requirements" (U24). This articulation can also be understood as a strategy of managing the technoeconomic change that the internet allegedly brings along. In this case, by drawing symbolic boundaries around the
'internet' as a concept and by describing the development of the internet in terms of national purposes and values, the policy documents essentially propose a way of conceptualizing technology. As the 1995 IHAC Report further explained, the internet has 217 to be built in accordance to what the 'nation' wants: "We want a competitive economy in a society that is civilized and humane. We want opportunity as individuals. We want to maintain our Canadian identity" (U183).
This articulation of the internet as a project to be developed by the Canadian nation further proposes specific roles for the three stakeholders that it identifies: the government, the industry and individual Canadians. As already mentioned, the role of the government is described as creating a positive environment for the private sector. Thus, the government has to redistribute resources that would allow the private sector to become more skilled in developing the internet and internet-related products. The government also has to address market imperfections that may result in less 'Canadian' internet-related products, allegedly due to the influx of such products from the United
States (especially in the 1995IHAC Report). Last, but not least, the government has to become a model user of the internet, leading by example (1995 IHAC Report, U34, 35,
36, 177). As the 1995 IHAC Report put it, "the government's role is vital" in
"encouraging] investment economic growth and the creation of of jobs for Canadians"
(U9).
For the private sector, the reports construct a quite different role: that of investing in and producing the internet and associated products and services as a means of profit- making. Here, profit-making becomes associated with national interest: the production of the 'Canadian internet' becomes a profitable enterprise, because it allegedly enhances "the way we choose to live[...]. For certain applications unique to Canada and our way of life, there is a strong argument to be made for Canada to develop technology specific to its needs. Doing so will enhance our quality of life and stimulate industrial development" 218
(1995 IHAC Report, U148). As a part of Canada, the Canadian ICT sector is also enrolled in this articulation as a part of the Canadian nation. In other words, this relation of agency works by 'nationalizing' economic activities. Thus, the ICT sector's role in building the information highway is constructed by the reports as a 'global race' for techno-economic leadership in the global world. A profitable ICT industry becomes the means to national prosperity and global leadership.
It is interesting to note here how these articulations promote a capitalist understanding of the nation, recommending that individuals take (national) pride in the economic success of some individuals/ companies. The roles that the policy reports prescribe for individuals are further indicative of this: Canadians are expected to adopt the internet in their private (as consumers of Canadian content) as well as professional (as information labour) lives. Thus, the reports insist on the necessity for Canadians to "get involved as users of information technology" and to "regard the Information Highway not as a threat but as an opportunity to enhance our lives and independence" (1995 IHAC
Report, U179). As internet-users, individuals are also expected to become a suitable workforce for the ICT industry. To benefit from the promised job opportunities of the
'Information Highway', people have to develop particular skills. While the reports admit that the internet will also lead to some job losses, such issues are minimized. As the 1995
IHAC Report stated, Canadians know that "they can expect job losses in some areas and gains in others" (U24). As for the investment and training required by the introduction of the internet in economic activities, these become an individual responsibility, part of the role that each Canadian has to adopt in building a 'Canadian internet'. 219
The roles described here have an important function: they seek to mobilize actors by appealing to their national identity. The promised benefits allegedly brought by technology are made dependent on the cooperation of these actors, as well as on their adoption of 'national interest' as the guiding principle in building the internet. This discursive 'imprinting' of a national character onto technology appears as an act of agency: taking charge of the nation's future, by transforming the unknown into an opportunity. Policy appears as form of change management on behalf of the nation; in that sense, the change management strategy developed via policy constitutes a mechanism of nation-maintenance, while nationalism becomes the main source of authority and legitimation in creating a plan for the development of the internet: "change can be managed to the common benefit of all Canadians" (1995 IHAC Report, U12).
B). The internet affects the nation: negative and positive effects
Through this relation, the internet is depicted as bringing a change to the nation. Just as in the case of the previous relation of agency, this change is seen as ambivalent: it has the potential to be both positive and negative for the nation. Again, this potential is linked to the internet's alleged 'global' nature; in this case, 'global' refers primarily to the capacity of communicating across national borders.
This relation also feeds from a wider discourse about the social role of technology, namely technological determinism. For Keith Grint and Steven Woolgar, technological determinism is a way of understanding technology as "an exogenous and autonomous development which coerces and determines social and economic organizations and relationships" (1997, p. 11). Importantly, this view of technology posits 220 that technological developments necessarily require that society adapts to them; they are an unavoidable and unforgiving mechanism of Darwinian selection.
The construction of the internet as an inevitable force affecting the nation draws from the discourse of technological determinism. Thus, whether the reports talk about economic or cultural aspects, the nation is required to adapt:
"The Information Highway will shape the future of our nation" (1995 IHAC
Report, U63).
"...the development of broadband networks, services and applications will have a
profound effect on all aspects of Canadian life. Broadband will transform the way
we learn, the way we work, the way we use our leisure, the way we govern
ourselves, the way we communicate, the way we express ourselves and the way
we care about each other" (2001 NBTF Report, U6).
Since change remains however ambiguous, the reports suggest that it can be managed through the development of a proper action plan which has to enrol the above mentioned stakeholders. The negative aspect of this change is portrayed as the alleged erosion of
Canadian choices enabled by the internet. The 1997 IHAC Report explained that new technologies "transcend national jurisdictions and borders" (U69); the internet was thus seen as weakening national borders, pressuring the nation to protect itself in a 'global' space: "the power of communication has destroyed distance and is injecting global realities into our living rooms, our workplaces - indeed, the entire realm of Canadian social, economic and cultural relations" (1997 IHAC report, U7). Here, the internet is seen as weakening the nation by allegedly 'destroying distance1 and allowing for 'global realities' to penetrate the space of the nation. The metaphorical use of the verb 'to inject' 221 evokes the image of the 'global' as something that is distinct from the 'nation', and can thus be inserted into its daily life; in this case, the 'global' is clearly a threat because it comes from the 'outside' of the nation.
This however does not mean that the internet is dissolving the nation. Rather, the reports position the internet as a marker of an allegedly new world within which the nation has to lead its daily life. Thus, the internet is still seen in terms of its alleged capacity to bring the nation together; in this case, the capacity to cut across borders rectifies the "adversities presented by our geography" (1995 IHAC Report, U 52), connecting rural and urban centres, as well as the remote and Northern communities to the rest of the nation. As the 1995 IHAC Report described it, the internet is "offering a chance for all Canadians to be part of the mainstream" (U47).
Importantly however, the world within which the internet introduces a change remains a capitalist one, characterized by a race for profit and economic growth. As the
1995 IHAC Report explained, "In the new information economy, success will be determined by the marketplace" (U7). This possibility for success is the positive side of the technoeconomic change of which the internet is both a part and an enabler. The policy reports rely on this positive depiction of change, often introduced as an 'enabling effect', an 'opportunity', a 'benefit' or even a 'revolution' (e.g. 1997 IHAC Report) for Canada and
Canadians, allegedly "transforming the way that Canadians interact and do business, in almost every field of endeavour, opening up new opportunities and challenges in both domestic and international markets" (1994 Government Strategy, U10).
Importantly, these benefits are constructed as not only transforming the industry, but also as bringing along new jobs and individual well-being. Thus, the internet is 222 described as bringing about "a new game" where "old rules no longer apply" (1995
IHAC Report, U52). The new game is the 'information society', a primarily economic configuration which seems to be characterized by an intensification of the national/ global dynamic and by an alleged centrality of creativity, innovation and information within the capitalist cycle of production/ consumption. As the 1995 IHAC Report described it, this is an "innovative economy" (U52), where the internet "links past achievements in communications to future aspirations, binds economy and culture in ways that harness the creative energies of Canadians, and open gateways to global trade in information products and services" (1995 CRTC Report, U6).
Importantly, in this new economic order, creativity and education are not only crucial, but also become the means through which a democratic society can be achieved.
This is yet another rearticulation of the classic dream of the free market doctrine: the idea that the unrestrained economy can fulfil the promise of a democratic and fair polis. The status of 'creativity', 'innovation' and 'information' are extremely interesting here, especially when juxtaposed with the Fordist image of labour in manufacturing environments. They promise that the 'information economy' will transform work into a creative process, thus allowing individuals to express themselves; yet, they also efface the fact that work is in itself an object of capitalism. The image of the information worker free to pursue her creativity is a rhetorical device hiding away the tedious and repetitive nature of work in the information technology sector191. Furthermore, in the information economy, the ability to get a job becomes an individual responsibility: as the 1995 IHAC
Report wrote, "The Highway is a portent of social transformation. Canadians must ask
191 For a popular exploration of this rhetoric around information workers as creative innovators, see Douglas Coupland's (1995) fictionalized novel on the lives of programmers at Microsoft. 223 themselves: Are they going to be passive in the face of change, or are they going to become agents of change themselves?" (U160).
The economic transformation allegedly brought by the internet is depicted as inevitable and imminent; the best strategy to manage it, as described by the policy reports, is a 'collective effort' where the government, the industry and the citizens work together for the greater economic benefit of the nation. The success of the industry becomes articulated as that of the nation and, by extension, of its members. In this process, nationalism helps attribute specific responsibilities to each of the stakeholders: industry performance, as well as individual performance in relation to the internet become an expression of national identity. This, I argue, is a significant discursive move: the traditional stabilization of the meaning of communication media had to do with their alleged capacity to reproduce national culture. In the case of the internet, the policy documents construct the nation-building role of this new medium primarily in terms of its economic impact; while the alleged ability to reproduce culture remains important, it is important in its capacity to generate profit. While economic nationalism is not something new, its resurgence in relation to communication technologies cannot be divorced from the neo-liberal discourse driving the image of the 'information society' (Garnham, 2000;
Mattlerat & Mattelart, 1992; Webster, 2000).
6.4 Summary
The conceptual relations and the articulations within which they are used presents an interesting map of the policy reports. Through them, the internet becomes constructed as an object of discourse within the context of policy. The two most important discourses 224 that facilitate this construction remain nationalism and neoliberalism. The former provides the system of classification through which the internet can be 'categorized'; in other words, the policy reports draw discursive boundaries around the internet and, in this process, position this communication medium as a national resource to be further managed by the state. On its side, neoliberalism infuses the understanding of the 'global' context within which Canada has to appropriate the internet. The latter is seen as an agent of change, which introduces the potential for both threat and growth into the space of the nation; to the extent that Canada as a whole takes control of the internet and 'nationalizes' it, the internet remains an opportunity.
Against the rhetoric of the information society discussed in Chapter 1, this analysis shows that the global and the national appear in the policy reports as discursive strategies through which particular policy actions are being proposed and legitimated. In particular, the policy reports enshrine a framework for cooperation between the government and the industry. It is probably fair to say that in spite of a rhetorical acknowledgement of social issues, the latter are secondary to profit-making and economic growth. Instead, the articulations bringing together the 'internet', the 'nation' and the 'global' are ultimately indicative not of the clash between nationalism and globalization (neoliberalism), but rather of their mutual constitution.
In this context, hegemony is an useful theoretical tool of interpretation: the discursive construction of the internet can be understood as a process of change management, where the 'new' is being discursively integrated within the existing social structure. These documents can be understood as attempts to 'make sense' of the internet, by proposing a particular articulations through which this medium should be understood. 225
Importantly, this does not mean that a particular articulation of the internet is 'imposed' onto people; instead, the articulations that they put forward constitute a framework within which we are 'interpellated' or 'incited' to make sense of the internet as a national resource. The ways in which these articulations are taken over by the media or by citizens remains a different matter. As we shall see in the next chapter, these articulations constitute the background within which the newspaper coverage constructs an understanding of the internet. 226 Chapter 7: Debating National Interest: Analyzing the News Coverage of the Policy Reports
The policy reports analyzed in the previous chapters have been widely discussed by the news media192. This coverage is approached here as an institutionalized space for public debate. While the press might not be the ideal Habermasian public sphere, it still remains a space where different social actors are given the opportunity to present their positions.
Thus, the news stories often present a variety of opinions from sources such as bureaucrats, politicians, journalists, editorialists, industry representatives, citizen and advocacy groups, and individual citizens193.
The analysis of the policy documents does not provide any insights into the discursive context of these reports outside of the policy sphere. By relating the policy to the press coverage, we can see how the policy documents respond, in fact, to pre-existing social debates and configurations of interests; once the internet becomes an object of national policy however, the debate shifts to how the distribution of resources (i.e. public funds, regulation) should be done. Thus, the various actors given a voice in the newspapers are always responding to the contextual, yet contingent, articulations of stories, material structures and power relations. In this context, the role of nationalism and globalization discourses in the formation of the internet as an object of discourse is different: for once, globalization discourses are not as important as a basis of legitimacy.
Second, while the national framing of the internet is generally reproduced by the newspaper articles, not all voices covered accept it as such. Last, but not least, where the ,92The only exception is the 1997 Digitization Report, for which I was unable to find any news stories. 193 Importantly, my approach here is not interested in how the readers interpret these articulations. The analysis focused exclusively on how the conceptual relations are being articulated in the news reports, and how these articulations relate to particular positions and agendas. 227 nation appears as a homogeneous category in the policy reports, the news stories put forward a view of the nation as a space of contestation and heterogeneity of opinions and values.
The chapter proceeds with an overview of the units of analysis selected from the newspaper articles. It then moves to providing a larger context for these articles, starting with the early 1990s (prior to the moment when the internet becomes a policy objective).
The last part of this chapter presents the main conceptual relations identified in the analyzed units.
7.1 The analysis sample
The news stories included in the analysis sample were found by searching the Canadian
Newsstand database after a number of keywords (see Chapter 4). After eliminating the duplicates and those articles that did not relate in an explicit way to the policy dynamics, the sample was reduced to a total of 136 stories. These stories came in a variety of genres
(from news to editorials and letters to the editor) and were mostly published in the news, business or editorial sections of newspapers (see Table 9).
Table 9: Distribution of articles across newspapers
Newspaper Number of articles Newspaper Toronto Star The Hamilton Spectator I27 - The Ottawa Citizen f21 The Windsor Star The Globe and Mail M7 Chatham Daily News Financial Post 7 Daily Mercury National Post 7 Daily News The Gazette 7 Expositor Calgary Herald 6 Leader Post The Vancouver Sun 6 New Brunswick Telegraph Journal The Spectator 5 North Bay Nugget 228
Kingston Whig - Standard 4 Sudbury Star Standard 4 The Province
Cobourg Daily Star ,2 The Record 1 Edmonton Journal 2 Times - Colonist ! 1 Sault Star 2 Whitehorse Star
As Table 10 indicates, the main actors featured in these stones (either explicitly mentioned or quoted) were the corporate sector (particularly Stentor and the telephone companies, as well as the cable industry and the ICT industry) and the federal government194. While citizen advocacy groups were given a voice in the news coverage of the 1995 CRTC Report, the 1995IHAC Report and the 1997IHAC Report, they were almost completely absent at the stage of launching the broadband policy initiative.
Table 10- Distribution of actors (quoted or mentioned) across the articles
Actors 1994 Government 1995 CRTC 1994-1999 IHAC 2001 NBTF Strategy Report Reports Report Analysts and experts 1 3 3 8 Artists or arts related institutions 0 1 8 0 Broadcasting institutions 0 3 13 0 Cable industry 3 11 8 0
CANARIE 7 0 2 1 Citizen advocacy groups 1 12 15 0 CRTC 6 28 7 0 Federal and provincial government 16 7 49 36 ICT Industry 10 1 9 10 IHAC/ NBTF I8 8 49 10 Stentor and other phone companies 21 23 18 4
Looking at the topics covered across these news stories (Table 11 below), we can see that the economic framing of the need for policy continued. The 1994 Government Strategy was anticipated by a wave of appeals made by Stentor and positioned as representing the
194 This is consistent with Cheryl Buchwald's study of the media coverage of the Canada's Coalition for Public Information, a non-governmental coalition involved in the IHAC proceedings After reviewing the coalition's work, including its presence in the media, Buchwald concludes that "ultimately the group did not exercise the influence for which it strove" (2000, p 142, also McDowell and Buchwald 1997) 229
voice of the industry on the need for policy intervention. Perhaps not surprisingly, during
the CRTC hearings, the question of the competition between telephone and cable
industries was balanced with that of the protection of cultural content. The culture
industries and their supporters advocated for the preservation of regulation, relying on
nationalism to legitimize their claims. The charge that the information highway was a
cover-up for profit-making interests makes its way into the articles, challenging the
articulation of the internet as a nation-building tool. The focus during the IHAC
proceedings seemed to be on the committee itself and on its power dynamics. Finally, the
coverage of the NBTF report became a battleground between the industry and policy
sectors, on the one hand, and their critics. While the first positioned broadband as a
nation-building tool, critics remain generally sceptical, questioning the necessity of
nation-building and focusing instead on the costs of this project.
Table 11: Frequency of topics across the articles in the sample r —' - I News stories Topics 1994 Government Strategy Industry appeal to make internet a policy priority (8 stories); 20 News stories Government makes the internet a policy priority (6 stories); Publication dates: September 1993 - December 1994 , Cost of internet development (2 stories); Copyright issues (1 story). 1995 CRTC Report CRTC hearings announced (8 stories); 28 News stories Canadian content: necessity to preserve content rules (6 Publication dates: October 1994 - November 1995 stories); CRTC Report: competition between broadcasters and telecommunications (6 stories); CRTC Report: ensuring access to the internet (3 stories); Canadian content: remove regulations (3 stories); Citizen concerns on access (1 story); Cost of access (1 story); CRTC Report: foreign ownership (1 story). 1994 -1999 IHAC Reports IHAC Report 1 (22 stories): 52 News stories Access and content (7 stories); Publication dates: January 1994 - November 1997 Culture (3 stories); Dissent of IHAC member (1 story); Foreign ownership (1 story). IHAC announced (13 stories): Lack of transparency (2 stories); Under representation of culture ( 4 stories); Content (1 story); Industry interests (1 story). 230
~1 IHAC Report 2 (5 stories), Government response to IHAC (3 stories); Warning on rural/ urban access divide (3 stories); Benefits of the internet (2 stories); Content: no regulation (2 story); Critique of IHAC. serving industry interests (1 article). 2001 NBTF Report NBTF Report (20 stories) 36 New stories Critique of the report (8 stories); Publication dates: January 2001 - January 2002 Praise for the report (4 stories). Advantages of broadband (4 stories); NBTF announced (4 stories); Cost of broadband (2 stories); [ Foreign ownership (2 stones); I Access (1 story); | Content (1 story), End of broadband initiative (1 story).
In the set of articles focused on the 1994 Government Strategy, nationalism was largely used in formulating the industry's interests around the internet as a matter of national interest. Once the internet became an object of policy, the government also announced the consultation process through a nationalist language. The coverage of the CRTC hearings and report juxtapose the inevitability of technological convergence with the alleged need for the preservation of Canadian content. Here, various actors used nationalism to position the question of content as a national feature, under threat by
'global' (American) dynamics. Some of these articulations were also present in the articles dealing with the two IHAC reports; nationalism helped legitimize the appointment of the
IHAC as a means of ensuring Canada's leadership position in the global market. The debate around culture intensified, pitting the government against the representatives of the culture industries. In the coverage of broadband, the government and the industry used nationalism yet again to frame the legitimacy of the project. However, the nationalist justification of the project was not as easily accepted as in the case of the previous reports. 231
7.2 Overview of the units of analysis
The sample of articles described above has been subsequently analyzed in terms of the conceptual relations established between the concepts 'internet', 'nation' and 'global'. A total of 281 relevant textual units where analyzed using the tool described in Chapter 4; their distribution is presented in Table 12 below. From a quantitative perspective, there are significantly less units in which conceptual relations include a reference to the 'global' dimension.
Table 12: The distribution of the analyzed units across the newspaper articles sample
Number of units analyzed for the 1994 Government 1995 CRTC 1994-1999 2001 NBTF conceptual relations Strategy News News IHAC News News Units analyzed for the relations established 37 38 99 107 between 'nation' and 'internet' Units analyzed for the relations established 10 20 20 between 'nation', 'internet' and 'global'
These units focus on a variety of overlapping topics, consistent across the sample (see
Table 13 below). They mostly deal with the different interests in the development of the internet in Canada and the alleged economic benefits of the information highway. These topics are similar to those in the units analyzed in the policy reports; this may indicate that the two discursive fields had a common agenda of discussion. Like in the case of the policy reports, most of these topics can be understood as part of the larger theme of change. The areas most affected by change are those of access to the internet, users/ consumers, convergence and content/ culture. Other areas such as the legal framework, education/ training or work remain quantitatively marginal. The discussion of change in these textual units is unfolding along the same conceptual oppositions as in the case of policy documents: benefits/ threats. Canadian/ international, domestic/ foreign, technology/ economy. 232
Table 13: The frequency of topics of the analyzed units across the newspaper articles sample
News stories sample Topics of the analyzed units 1994 Government Strategy News Internet in Canada (16 units); Economic benefits (6 units); International context (5 units); National policy on the internet (4 units); Technological leadership (4 units); Access to the internet (2 units); Ownership (1 unit).
1995 CRTC Report News Content (16 units); Access to the internet (11 units); Users as consumers (4 units); Convergence (3 units); Benefits of the internet for Canada (2 units); Foreign ownership (2 units); National policy on the internet (2 units); Costs of the internet (1 unit); Demand for the internet (1 unit); Internet in Canada (1 unit); Technological leadership (1 unit) 1994 -1999 IHAC Reports News Content (26 units); Access to the internet (19 units); Internet in Canada (19 units); Benefits of the internet to Canada (11 units); Technological leadership (8 units); Technoeconomic change (6 units); The internet as a threat (6 units); Digital divides (3 units); International context (3 units); Use of the internet (3 units); National policy on the internet (3 units); Foreign ownership (2 units); Hate speech (2 units); Capital (2 units); I Industry (2 units); Legal framework (2 units); I Education and the internet (1 unit); Nation-building (1 unit); Privacy (1 unit); I Work/ employment and the internet (1 unit). 2001 NBTF Report News Access to the internet (52 units); Internet in Canada (19 units); Digital divides (15 units); Cost of the internet (14 units); | Benefits of the internet (9 units); International leadership (7 units); E-commerce (3 units); Foreign ownership (3 units); Nation-building (3 units); International context (2 units); Use of the internet (2 units); Technoeconomic changes (2 units); Content (1 unit); Education and the internet (1 unit). 233
The conceptual relations identified in the sample were analyzed in terms of their strength and tone. Within the analyzed units, most of these conceptual relations were either explicitly stated or emphasized. This may indicate that these relations remain semantically relevant in the news coverage as well (see Table 14).
Table 14: Strength of the conceptual relations between 'internet' and 'nation' in the news stories sample
Strength 1994 Government 1995 CRTC 1994-1999 2001 NBTF Strategy News News IHAC News News Relation implied 7 6 7 12 Relation stated 10 30 76 86 Relation emphasized 20 2 16 9
Finally, just as in the case of the policy documents, the conceptual relations mostly referred to a neutral or a positive relation among the main concepts (see Table 15 below).
Again, this seems consistent with the overview of the topics presented in Table 13: most of the units addressed the benefits and not the threats allegedly brought by the internet.
The conceptual relations took a negative form in the context of the discussion of the competitive relation between Canada and the United States; in such cases, the internet was seen as potentially harming Canada if a proper policy framework is not urgently implemented.
Table 15: Tone of the conceptual relations between 'internet' and 'nation' in the newspaper stories sample Tone 1994 Government 1995 CRTC 1994-1999 2001 NBTF Strategy News News IHAC News News Positive 9 13 32 26 Neutral 28 21 52 66 Negative 2 4 18 15 234
Overall, the conceptual relations identified in the news stories were similar to those in the policy reports. This may indicate a discursive overlap between these two social spheres.
However, if the policy documents were more preoccupied with the issue of change and change management, the news stories seemed to debate particular aspects of the change management strategy. This focus may stem from the coverage of the various actors involved in debating the policy process; these actors tried to re-define change management strategies in line with their own interests.
7.3 Contextualizing the newspaper articles
To better understand the context within which the sample of news stories analyzed here framed the internet as an object of discourse, this section will provide an overview of the newspaper coverage of the internet prior to the moment when it became a policy issue.
Although this overview is not as systematic as the analysis of the conceptual relations195, it does provide a background for understanding where the construction of the internet as an object of discourse was coming from. Importantly, this overview indicates that the push for making the internet a policy objective came primarily from the industry sector
(especially the Stentor coalition, backed by an emerging ICT sector).
As discussed in Chapter 5, Canada's information policy did not emerge in the mid
1990s with the popularization of the internet. Long before that, the government and the information sector established a working relationship which consisted of delegating the responsibility for developing information collection and storage solutions to the industry.
1951 did not do a comprehensive analysis of this early newspaper coverage. The stories upon which I rest my argument here were returned after a simple search of the Canadian Newsstand database using the keyword 'internet'. The search was also restricted to the time frame January 1993 - December 1994. A set of 55 articles that did not deal with policy dynamics was used for the discussion presented next. 235
On its side, the information sector pressed the government for allowing them to extract a benefit from the collected public information. Almost none of this historical context makes its way into the coverage of the internet. In a sense, it seems as if the 'information society' was born in January 1993, when U.S. vice-president Al Gore announced the construction of the information highway. An article in The Gazette extensively quoted
Vinton Cerf, one of the designers of the internet, describing the significance of this
'information highway' as a 'new world': "You have to imagine that this kind of reaching out from anywhere in the world to anywhere else in the world, at your fingertips, has got to change the way we think about our world [...] It will become critical for everyone to be connected. Anyone who doesn't will essentially be isolated from the world" (in Radin,
1993, p. C3).
This early account of the internet is indicative of the optimistic hype around ICTs in the 1990s (Flew, 2008; Mosco, 2005). Cerf s vision was not only an emotionally and morally satisfying account of the future, but also a warning on the inevitability of technological change. Yet, as the analysis undertaken here indicates, the image of the
'global village' was soon replaced by that of economic globalization as the inevitable structure to which society must adapt. Interestingly enough, the neoliberal vision behind the image of the 'global marketplace' does not displace nationalism, but rather works with it to legitimize both the support that governments increasingly provide business actors and to ensure that 'national' constituencies (i.e. the population of able bodies) is mobilized behind profit-making goals.
Thus, the early newspaper coverage of the internet consisted of three major discussions. The first set of articles focused primarily on making the internet 236 comprehensible to audiences. The articles attempted to translate the technical jargon and to provide information on the existing internet service providers and bulletin boards.
Articles in the second set presented the benefits of the 'information highway', positioning the medium as crucial to Canada. Initially, the emphasis was on the 'dramatic changes' to people's lives allegedly brought by the internet, enabling them to "communicate electronically with teachers, pick a lawyer or a doctor more judiciously, learn instantly about a medical prescription, find out about travel opportunities, find people with similar interests" (Bill Gates quoted in Rosenberg, 1993, D5). As the struggle around the future shape of the internet intensified, the mundane framing of these alleged benefits was replaced by an economic construction of the internet, which relied on nationalism to position this medium as a tool of economic change impacting the nation. Importantly, this articulation was promoted by the powerful consortium of phone companies in Canada,
Stentor196 which, together with the Information Technology Association of Canada
(ITAC), advocated for the necessity of public support for the development of the information highway. The economic framing and its reliance on nationalism will become a central articulation in the analyzed sample.
Articles in the last category dealt with the negative aspects of the internet, warning audiences on a variety of potential threats, such as the lack of an adequate protection for internet users, privacy problems, or the risk of the formation of new media monopolies. Again, there was a plurality of perspectives here: some actors focused on
196 Stentor was an alliance formed under Bell Canada's leadership and including 8 provincial telephone companies. The purpose of the alliance was to ensure that the telephone companies will not compete against each other in their regional markets (Rugman & D'Cruz, 1994). The alliance was brought to an end by Bell in 1999, as regional phone companies (particularly Telus) started to compete with Bell in its traditional markets (Ontario and Quebec). 237 mundane threats'97. Others, like Stentor, positioned the lack of a policy framework on
ICTs as the major threat to Canada as a nation. As an ITAC representative argued, "If we're not doing something, we'll become a third-world country. It'll hit not only our economy, but our social system as well" (in Kainz, 1994, p. Bl). These industry actors were more interested in debating issues such as the cost of the infrastructure and the role of the existing regulatory framework (with an eye to making the internet an object of policy-making). The problem, according to the industry, was that politicians refused to take action198. Importantly, this is the articulation that the government engages with and thus enshrines as the proper understanding of the internet: as an enabler of economic growth, the medium became constructed as requiring policy intervention in order to create a suitable environment for economic growth.
Yet, the industry was not homogeneous: smaller ICT companies raised doubts on the grandiose economic and nationalist framing of the internet. "Nobody on earth really knows how this will play out, whether it will make money for anybody and, if it does, how much or how little or what the demand is out there" (Marrotte, 1993, p. D3).
Furthermore, while Stentor was more interested in removing the barriers to competition, others were concerned with the high cost of using the telephone lines to access the internet. These voices however all but disappear in the subsequent debates around policy, brushed aside by the alleged inevitability of the technoeconomic change seemed to which the nation 'had to' adapt. Yet, as David Suzuki warned, "there is widespread belief that new technologies that transform society almost overnight are inevitable and a measure of
197 For example, one such article depicts the availability of information as a threat to social capital. The internet is seen as a technology that transforms people into couch potatoes (Kainz, 1993, p. D4) 198 The action that the industry advocates for is the removal of regulation on competition, as well as public resources allocated to the development of (private) ICT applications and infrastructure 238 progress. To a public which might legitimately question the need for yet more technology or whether the benefits are worth it, this sense of inevitability is profoundly disempowering" (Suzuki, 1993, p. A7). Such warnings remained marginal in the coverage of the policy reports, being co-opted into the economic articulation of the internet and thus shifting from a concern with the impact of ICTs on people to a concern with their impact on the economic future of the nation. From this perspective, the interesting questions here are: who frames the internet as an inevitable transformation, why is this transformation thought of as primarily an economic one, and what is the role of nationalism in this process.
7.4 The conceptual relations
The conceptual relations established between the main concepts are similar to those identified in the policy documents: relations of existence, qualification, possession/ determination and agency. The difference from the policy reports lies however in the articulations within which these relations are used. In the policy documents, the discourse of nationalism remains seemingly uniform; the meaning of the main concepts
(e.g. nation, national culture etc.) is neither clarified, nor disputed upfront. On the contrary, in the news stories, this discourse becomes a locus of social struggle between various actors, each trying to put forward their own articulation of how the internet and the nation (should) look like. 239
7.4.1 Relations of existence
The two main forms of this relation - A). The internet in Canada (and in other countries); and B). Canada on the internet - remained sparsely used in the newspaper articles. In both cases, the internet was constructed as either an infrastructure built within the national borders, or as a virtual place that the nation had to occupy. The internet - infrastructure and content - was at the same time 'global' and 'national', where the 'global' dimension appeared as a sum of national spaces.
A). The internet in Canada
This relation appeared once in the news coverage of the 1995 CRTC hearings, and only a few times in the articles on the 1994 Government Strategy, the proceedings of the IHAC and the NBTF. Michael Billig (1995) noted that often media do not need to specify the national framing of their reporting by naming the country or the nation. Instead, the national dimension remained implied through references such as 'we', 'our' or 'here', or through the angle of the story. This was also the case of the news articles discussed here; although the discourse of nationalism was frequently relied upon, there was less need for clarifying that the policy debates refer to the internet in Canada. Instead, the focus was on whether a particular description of the internet truly served the Canadian nation or not.
When this relation of existence was explicitly mentioned, it often served to emphasize the requirement that the internet, as an infrastructure, should be made available throughout the whole country. The news coverage of the 1994 Government
Strategy and of the 2001 NBTF Report made reference to the necessity of ensuring a
'Canadawide' dimension to the internet. In discussing the emergence of the policy 240 initiative, one article provided a brief definition of the information highway: "a network of wires and cables linking computers across the country" (1994 Government Strategy
News, Ul); another article explained that this network will "one day flow into the homes of every Canadian" (1994 Government Strategy News, Ul 1). Here, the focus was on the geographical spread of the infrastructure. However, unlike the policy documents, this geo-spatial dimension of the internet was in itself debated in the news coverage, particularly in terms of who should cover its costs. As discussed further, in the news stories, what exactly constituted the 'Canadian' deployment of the internet as an infrastructure was widely disputed, pitting the urban versus the urban spaces against each other. Furthermore, as this deployment was often discussed in terms of the costs required to ensure the availability of the infrastructure in Northern and remote communities, the latter often appeared as too marginal for the 'nation' to justify the spending of public resources.
B). Canada on the Internet
In the previous chapter, I have proposed that through this relation, the internet was
'Canadianized' as a place where the Canadian nation travels and lives virtually. The presence of the nation online was imagined not only in terms of the transfer of national culture (i.e. the issue of Canadian content), but also in terms of the ways in which
Canadians use the internet. In the news coverage, this relation of existence was similarly constructed in the context of discussions over Canadian content and access to the internet, particularly in the coverage of the CRTC, IHAC and the NBTF proceedings199.
199 There is no mention of this relation in the coverage of the 1994 Government Strategy. This is consistent with the topics dealt with in those articles, which focused more on the dynamics preparing the ground for 241
The nation on the internet: content
In this articulation, the internet became described as a virtual cultural place which, like the offline world, was inhabited by various nations. As one article remarked, this was exactly what the CRTC hearings were all about: a plan for "preserving a Canadian lane on the worldwide information highway" (1995 CRTC News, U36). Such a lane was presented as a means for preserving Canadian sovereignty and cultural identity. The information highway was thus turned into a 'national place', understood in a Deutschian manner as an allegedly shared (though largely unspecified) cultural and communicational universe. Thus, the presence of the nation online became the means through which the nation was maintained and reproduced:
"Our school boards are going to spend great amounts of money connecting our
students to the Internet. But who is worrying about developing the Canadian
content on this network? Someone has to provide some leadership to ensure that
our children are getting the information about Canadian issues from a Canadian
perspective" (1995 CRTC News, U20).
In this quote, the nation's presence online was constructed as the necessary means through which its children will inherit the national culture. As another article put it,
"Canadian stories must have a place on this highway" (1995 CRTC News, U25). The normativity was also fostered by the warning that if such content will not be present online, then "Canadian programming will get washed aside by the incredible tidal wave of American content that will dominate the information highway now under construction" policy action (see Table 2). 242
(1995 CRTC News, U26). American content - and not the unspecified 'foreign content' - was clearly positioned as the threat in this case; from this perspective, the internet appeared yet again as a space that the nation has to claim for itself in order to ensure its own survival: "Canadians must not simply be consumers on the information highway. We must be contributors, if the highway is to strengthen and not weaken Canada as a nation"
(IHACNews,U14).
Here, the normative requirement for Canada to occupy the internet space was once again articulated through the pair contributor-active/ consumer-passive, appealing to individuals-as-national members to assume responsibility for making the internet
'Canadian'. As noted before, this articulation goes hand in hand with an economic framing of the internet as a 'Canadian resource' able to bring economic benefits to the nation. As another article proposed, the individual's responsibility to claim the 'Canadian space' online directly affected the availability and profitability of Canadian digital products. Thus, if the nation was to be protected from the "deluge of United States software, video games and multimedia products" (IHAC News, U47) into Canada, then both Canadians and the Canadian industry had to come together, supporting each other.
Yet, this relation of existence was also marked by the diversity of voices struggling to define how the 'Canadian lane' should actually be constructed. This battle of representations took two main forms: the discussion of the costs for building the
'Canadian lane' and the discussions around the commodification of culture. In the first case, the debate focused on the distribution of resources: should the production of content be subsidized in one form or another? As one article reporting on the 1997 IHAC Report argued, "content quotas won't work in the borderless world of the Internet, but a $50 243 million-a-year fund for distinctively Canadian multimedia production and an investment tax credit could give the country a strong voice on the Web" (IHAC News, U93; also
NBTF coverage, U50). In this case, the existence of the 'nation' online is presented as a matter of public funding, rather than regulation.
Yet, other voices challenged this articulation, arguing that it 'commodities' natural culture, favouring a view of culture as a profit-making activity rather than a creative endeavour. As the executive director of the Canadian Conference of the Arts (a non-profit organization of the arts and culture communities) explained, although cultural producers were represented in the workings of the IHAC, the "creative side of the cultural industries", namely the artists themselves, were largely ignored: "We fear Canada may end up with a strong producer/ user bias on the information highway, without input from creators. Artists and creators have been among the pioneers in using this technology"
(IHAC News, U71). In this rather singular articulation, the existence of the nation on the internet was constructed as an act of individual creativity, and not as an institutionalized
'colonization' guided by profit-making goals.
The nation on the internet: access
Invoking the argument of access as social entitlement, this form of the relation of existence portrays the internet as a resource that must be made available to the whole nation. By having access, individuals become 'Canadian users' consuming 'Canadian culture'. Again, this economic articulation of the internet as an economic space and of individuals as users remains uncontested in the newspaper coverage of the policy reports; however, what becomes debated is the question of which groups should be guaranteed 244 access to the internet. Importantly, this debate over access was in itself economically motivated: as already mentioned, it questioned the distribution of public resources towards rural, remote and Northern communities.
In spite of the government's declared goal to achieve a 'national dream' where "all
Canadians, everywhere, [will] have affordable access to the information highway"
(NBTF News, U19), academics and citizen advocacy groups worried that, in fact, groups such as the poor, the rural and remote communities, or the indigenous communities living in Northern Canada were left behind in terms of access. Given the economic framing of the internet, this translated into lack of economic opportunities and thus further
(economic) marginalization for these communities: "economic, educational - and even medical - disparities between urban areas and small towns in Canada will widen on the emerging information highway, unless Ottawa acts fast" (IHAC News, U25). This articulation of the nation's presence on the internet in terms of access legitimized the request that the government addressed not only industry needs, but also the rural/ urban divide in terms of access to and availability of internet services. Access, reframed as a core 'Canadian value', was juxtaposed to a neo-liberal vision of the government as the guarantor of the free market, where the industry could benefit from public resource in order to create a competitive 'Canadian internet'. As one article deplores it, the government's failure to intervene on behalf of the nation has left the latter "entirely in the hand of the private sector" (IHAC News, U55).
This articulation was further proposed in the coverage of the NBTF report. In this case, the interests behind these articulation changed almost completely: while the task force and government officials used nationalist rhetoric to justify public investment in 245 broadband, other voices (primarily editors, analysts, but also individual citizens) challenged the need for upgrading the infrastructure in all parts of Canada. Access was no longer a social entitlement, but a luxury; and since it involved the spending of public budgets, the necessity of funding the upgrade of the infrastructure with taxpayers' money was widely questioned. In this case, some editorialists took aim with the nationalist wrapping of broadband as a nation-building process. The supporters of public funding - namely the government and the major telecommunication companies involved in the upgrading process - articulated an image of the existence of the nation on the internet as dependent on broadband; the nationalist threat of loosing the technoeconomic leadership position served to remind audiences that Canada's existence online was something that required ongoing support: "We're in a prized yet precarious position - just behind the global greyhound (the United States), with Sweden and Finland nipping at our heels"
(NBTF News, U88). In this case, the idea of a global market of competition amongst industrialized countries worked as both an opportunity and a threat.
Communication scholar Sue Curry Jansen argued that the efforts to construct nations as brands have two functions: externally, such efforts are allegedly opening opportunities for creating greater visibility for nations, attracting investors and expanding exports; internally, they are seen as inflating national pride and solidarity (2008, p. 124).
In this case, positioning Canada as a technological leader was primarily directed toward national audiences; the necessity of public investment in broadband was justified by appealing to national pride. At the same time, this interpellation of readers as members of the nation sought to create support for this project. 246
7.4.2 Relations of qualification
In the context of the policy documents, the two forms of this conceptual relation qualified the internet as 'national' and as 'global'. The image of the 'global internet' remained extremely rare in the analyzed units, mostly appearing in the coverage of the IHAC reports, where the internet is described as 'global networks' (IHAC News, U47) made up of'national' internets or as a carrier of'foreign content' (IHAC News, U46, U47). For this reason, this section discusses only the articulations of the 'Canadian internet'.
In the policy reports, what made the internet 'Canadian' was both its geographical spread and the infusion of national values into its construction. The phrase 'Canadian internet' semantically brought the two concepts together, proposing an image of the internet as both a place bounded by both symbolic and material national boundaries.
As an infrastructure, the internet was described as a "national electronic superhighway" (1994 Government Strategy News, U2), a "national system of high-tech info links" (1994 Government Strategy News, U16), "a uniquely Canadian information highway" (IHAC News, U53), "a Canadianized highway" (IHAC News, U60), a
"national broadband network" (NBTF News, U77) and so on200. These denominators were mostly used to designate a subject or an object of policy action. The debate took the form of a debate over what the nation wanted this 'Canadian Information Highway' to look like and how it should be built.
For example, in the coverage of the 1994 Government Strategy, this relation of qualification legitimized the telephone companies' request to make the internet a policy
From a quantitative perspective, the attribute 'national' is preferred over that of Canadian'. 247 priority201. The internet was depicted as "the modern nation's infrastructure" (1994
Government Strategy News, Ul) and compared to the railway in terms of both its alleged economic and nation-building importance. But Stentor used this relation of qualification to ask for the removal of the regulative framework on competition and for the redistribution of public resources toward the public sector for the construction/ upgrade of the internet. In the coverage of the 2001 NBTF Report however, this relation of qualification was used in quite a different context. There, the attribute 'national' was under question; most articles took issue with the cost of making broadband available through a publicly funded project; thus, the 'national' dimension of the internet was disputed, seeking to mobilize audiences against the broadband project. The "national broadband network" was described as a giant that nobody needed (NBTF News, U8) and a 'scheme' that would "break-the-bank" of the country (NBTF News, U74). At stake, from the perspective of the editorialists who opposed this project, was the use of public funds to support, yet again, a private venture: "Will we need a national broadband network? Probably yes. But the private sector stands to gain the most from such a venture
..."(NBTF News, U78).
When compared to the discursive effort in the 2001 NBTF Report to position broadband as a 'national dream' and as a social entitlement, the discourse within the press appeared even more indicative of the social struggle around the cost of infrastructure (and particularly the cost of making broadband available in rural and remote communities). In the newspaper articles, the official discourse on 'national values' and 'national interest'
201 Quantitatively speaking, this relation appears mostly in the coverage of the 1994 Government Strategy and of the NBTF proceedings The coverage of the 1995 CRTC report and of the IHAC proceedings mentions this qualification relation only a few times By that time, the press has taken over the formulation 'Canadian Information Highway', probably from the policy/ political sphere 248 came under a continuous negotiation, revealing, on the one hand, the tension between urban and rural environments, and on the other, the tension between some parts of civil society (in particular the journalists from the National Post and those from the
Whitehorse Star) and the perceived government/ industry partnership. From this perspective, the policy sphere and the newspapers diverged: in the sphere of policy, the extension of the benefits of modernization to remote and rural communities was positioned as a matter of nation-building. In the press, some actors challenged this project, rearticulating it as one of redistribution of public funds, contributed mostly by the urban environment, to the private pockets of the industry.
Interestingly enough, the last two articles from the sample of stories analyzed here returned to the idea of the 'national broadband' as a 'national dream'. These stories, published by the Leader Post (a regional newspaper serving Saskatchewan and affiliated with the Postmedia Network), appeared in the aftermath of what one newspaper called the 'death' of the broadband project, and can be seen as failed attempts to re-initiate the conversation on this topic by relying on nationalist rhetoric:
"Maybe this is a foolish idea. Maybe urbanization is where Canada is headed and
to pump billions of dollars into the rural and northern economy is throwing good
money after bad. Still, Canadians need dreams. And that's how the national
broadband proposal strikes me. It's a dream for a better Canada" (NBTF News,
U104). 249
7.4.3 Relations of possession/determination
This conceptual relation constructed the internet as an object of the nation. Just like in the case of the policy documents, the genitive 'Canada's information highway' overlapped with the qualifier 'Canadian internet'; both designated a medium understood primarily in its national form. The relation mostly appeared in the context of discussions about the process of building the internet. Unlike the policy documents however, this relation did not have a mobilization function; instead, it appeared as a discursive battleground between the telephone and cable companies (e.g. 1995 CRTC News, U9), or between
Stentor and its critics. 'Canada's information highway' was often portrayed as a work in progress, entailing further intervention from the government. It was also seen as a medium whose role was to connect all parts and sectors of Canadian society:
"The federal government will spend $132 million developing Canada's
information highway and connecting every community, school, library and
museum by 1998, says a long-awaited industrial strategy" (1994 Government
Strategy News, U31).
In the coverage of the IHAC proceedings, the genitive was often used in reference to the image of the internet as a tool of nation-building. Yet, although nobody questioned this national framing of the internet, various actors put forward different visions of how this development should be tackled to best serve Canada. Unlike the policy reports, where the nation appeared as homogeneous and unproblematic, the use of the possessive in the press coverage reveals - yet again - the persuasive efforts of various social actors.
Thus, for example, a news article in The Globe and Mail declared that the
"information highway needs foreign capital"; the columnist argued that lifting the 250 restrictions on foreign investment in telecommunication companies was needed to develop 'Canada's internet': "Canada's information highway will require 'large investments, and foreign investors often provide advanced technology and services in addition to capital. Limitations on foreign ownership/participation may have the effect of denying access to needed capital'" (IHAC News, U73, 777). In this case, the support for a neo-liberal de-regulatory approach was legitimized as best serving the entire nation: "As the council's report implies, Canada needs more investment, more capital, more expertise and more equipment. If Canada wants the investment, jobs and leading-edge development that comes with telecommunications, an open investment market will help it happen sooner rather than later. Ottawa's logical negotiating position should be a wide open market" (Corcoran, 1995, p. B2).
When looked at from this perspective, the articulations proposed by the policy reports appeared as an effort to appease the various positions and arguments put forward by different social groups. Thus, the government often portrayed 'Canada's internet' as the new telephone or railway, referencing both the alleged economic benefits and nation- building effects of these technologies (e.g. IHAC News, U2). The government also tried to deal with these arguments by positioning IHAC as a consultative process through which the various interests in the development of the internet can be brought together into a common, national strategy; in this context, the 'nation' was used as an over-arching goal that all of these actors should adopt (e.g. IHAC News, U2, 7, 21, 52). As already noted in the case of the previous relations, the various voices covered by the newspapers subscribed to this national framing of the internet; what they contested, however, were the specific details of what came to be articulated as 'Canada's internet'. 251
7.4.4 Relations of agency
This relation tied the two concepts together in the form of a subject acting upon an object.
Like in the policy reports, this relation of agency came in two forms: A), the nation as an agent, affecting the internet; and B). the internet affecting the nation.
A). The nation as an agent: the nation builds the internet
Through this relation, the policy documents constructed the internet as a national object; what made it 'national' was its alleged development in accordance with national values.
This idea was further discussed in the news; as one news story described it, "We want to ensure that we have a truly Canadian information highway" (IHAC News, U31). Here, the nation was implied as a collective actor, with a specific set of values, desires and needs.
However, where the policy documents talked in a seemingly unitary voice about
Canadian values (often without listing or clarifying them), the press appeared more as a forum where these values were debated, as various actors proposed different articulations of what 'Canada' was, what its needs were, and what values it espoused now. At stake in this debate was the steering of the development process; various actors - primarily the telephone and cultural industries, but also journalists, civil society and individuals - proposed their particular versions of how public resources should be deployed in building the information highway.
As David Young (2003) observed in his own discussion of the IHAC proceedings, the discourse of Canadian technological nationalism worked hand in hand not only with a 252 technologically deterministic vision of technology as impacting the nation, but also with a vision of collective human agency. Thus, allegedly by virtue of its will, the nation appeared as able to contain the negative impacts of technology and to transform its potential into a nation-building tool. In this way, technologies such as the railway or the broadcasting system became both proofs of the nation's 'daring vision' (as one commentator described it), and mechanisms through which the nation itself was built:
"The Canadians who built this country succeeded because they had a strong sense
of public interest. We would do well to remember that as we proceed with the
information highway" (IHAC News, U34)
In the coverage of the 1994 Government Strategy, this articulation was advanced by
Stentor, who argued that the country had to make the internet a policy priority, or risk loosing its competitiveness on the 'global marketplace'. As it turned out, the 'global' was in fact imagined in relation to the United States: the necessity to make the internet a policy priority was not legitimized on the basis of a perceived need to make a new technology congruent with national values; instead, the proposal was legitimized by recourse to the nationalist fear of being nothing more than a satellite of the United States:
"The need for an electronic information highway - one of the most critical factors
in the country's future prosperity - is being ignored [...] Unless Canada develops
U.S.-style political support [...] the country risks falling behind other nations"
(1994 Government Strategy News, Ul).
In the early stages (the coverage of the 1994 Government Strategy), the press did not contest this vision of the industry. In asking the government to make the development of the internet a national issue, the internet was constructed as a nation-building tool (Adria, 253
2010; Charland,1986; Young, 2003). The image of Canada as a technological leader was also an important source of'national pride': this leadership became the 'proof of the nation's determination to build technology after its own image. As one ICT expert remarked, the process of building the 'Canadian internet' was a reflection of the 'Canadian way': "We didn't do it with the same pizazz and glitz as they did in the United States. We didn't have an Al Gore up on a soapbox extolling the virtues of an information highway, but we're Canadian and a little more understated about it" (1994 Government Strategy
News, U12). Over and over again, the newspaper coverage juxtaposed the 'Canadian way' with the 'American way', constructing the latter as the 'Other' against whom the nation has to assert itself; not surprisingly, the fact that actors in Canada often copied the solutions developed in the United States or consumed the cultural content originating there was entirely absent from the discussion.
However, the seemingly happy coexistence of the press and the industry did not last long. Once the internet was placed on the policy agenda, the press became a site of struggle between different actors with a vested interest in how the internet should be built. In the coverage of the 1995 CRTC hearings, this took the form of debates on what the nation wanted the internet to look like. By contrast, in the policy reports, the nation's wishes were presented as a description of an alleged 'factual reality' that nobody seemed to question. Thus, perhaps paradoxically, the debates in the news stories exposed the socially constructed nature of the 'nation': its wishes were not 'out there', transparent to everyone, but a matter of negotiations between particular interest groups. As Marco Adria remarked, "In Canada, as elsewhere, technology limns the identity of the modern nation- 254 state. Under the surface of technology's metallic sheen, political and cultural conflicts are accommodated, resolved, or set aside" (2010, p. 48).
All voices in this debate claimed to speak on behalf of the 'nation'; perhaps in line with the prevailing economic framing of this problematic, this nation was often imagined as an economic act of production or consumption of culture. Thus, the nation was constructed by bringing together the terms 'consumer' and 'Canadians'; in this articulation, this consumer-nation allegedly wanted its 'power to choose' upheld in the building of the internet:
"the consumer, not the government, will sit in the driver's seat on the information
highway. Canadians want an unrestricted view of infobahn services and they will
exercise their power to choose" (1995 CRTC News, U9).
The battle over the right 'blueprint' for the internet often took the form of a battle over what the nation was; in this case, by defining the nation in terms of consumption, the industry was able to position its requests for removal of competition restrictions between broadcasting and telecoms industries as an expression of the nation's will. Importantly, this 'national will' draws from the neo-liberal vision of the free market as fostering and protecting individual choice. In other words, the argument was that market dynamics would result in the best services and products for all members of the nation. This shifted the focus of the debates over communication media from the protection of national culture (predominant in the case of television, as described in Chapter 5) to the protection of consumption choices.
Where a few voices (coming from the cultural industries sector and crystallized in the 1995 IHAC Report and the 1995 CRTC Report) still expressed the fear that the 255 internet will allow the influx of American content, requesting that policy makers
"ensure[d] that a reasonable number of bits and bytes sent along this highway are
Canadian" (1995 CRTC News, U25), industry representatives minimalized these fears.
The stakes however were quite complex: on the one hand, a proposed policy recommendation suggested that telephone and cable companies developing the internet may be subjected to a 'Canadian content tax' (a tax that would subsequently fund the development of Canadian content and that would exempt the telecommunications industry from the Cancon quota rules). On the other hand, industry experts were concerned that this would translate into higher costs of access for smaller internet providers and for the users (as the telecommunications giants would charge higher prices to collect the proposed Canadian content tax). Representatives of the ICT sector were also interested in tapping into the market of 'online content', and as such advocated the removal of barriers to competition between content providers and carriers. In this case, they constructed their request against the threat of marginalization for Canada; if Canada was to loose its technoeconomic leadership, they argued, all Canadians would suffer, as their living standard would decrease. Last, but not least, the arts and culture sector, through the voice of the Canadian Conference of the Arts, was afraid that this arrangement would end up diverting funds from the development of cultural products to the development of software and multimedia products.
Thus, even if business interests were quite diverse, they converged in articulating an image of the nation as best served by unhindered market forces; Canada's alleged need to develop an ICT sector was presented as enabling the country to compete 'globally' and to develop not 'Canadian content', but 'Canadian resources' that gave consumers a choice 256
(IHAC News, U37, 38). The industry - and not 'national values' or 'national culture' - was seen as the main driver of the internet; as such, public resources had to be directed toward creating a positive environment for this sector to thrive (IHAC News, U79).
The 1995 CRTC Report however brought back the question of social entitlement in relation to the construction of the internet. A citizen advocacy group (the Public
Information Highway Advisory Council) attempted to bring access back onto the agenda of discussion, accusing the government for handing out the internet to the private sector,
"effectively shutting out average Canadians" (IHAC News, U55). The government, non governmental organizations and the press increasingly focused on access, constructing the internet in terms of social equity, a core value of Canadian nationalism: as the
Industry Minister described it, the policy process should be an act where "together as
Canadians, we must decide how we want to develop and use the information highway for the economic, cultural and social advantages of all Canadians" (IHAC News, U15). The discourse of nationalism legitimized this vision of the internet as a public utility that should be as affordable and as available as the telephone or television; furthermore, its supporters juxtaposed this vision to that of the 'greedy corporation', who did not care about public interest (IHAC News 9, 10, 36).
The discussion of access also spoke of the important tension permeating the social imagination of the 'Canadian nation': that between major urban centres and the small, remote, rural and Northern communities In the press coverage (and particularly in the coverage of the 2001 NBTF Report), this tension appeared as a primarily economic one, involving the distribution of public funds to cover for the development of the internet's infrastructure across great distances. In this case, the government tried to position the 257 redistribution of public funds to the telecommunications industry (in charge of upgrading the broadband infrastructure) as a 'national' duty: that of ensuring equal access to opportunities. Access and connectivity were positioned as 'national goals' and compared to the challenge Canada faced in building its railway and broadcasting systems (NBTF
News, Ul 1, 12). Allegedly, this was "the daring vision Canadians used to be known for"
(NBTF News, U14). Yet, as already mentioned, this articulation was challenged by some journalists as a cover-up for promoting industry interests over social issues (e.g. NBTF
News, U35, U58). Again, at stake was what Canadians actually wanted: far from being homogeneous, the 'desires' and 'needs' of the nation were put under question, negotiated and debated. The idea of a priori 'Canadian values' became questionable.
Thus, where in the context of the policy documents, this relation of agency legitimized specific roles for the main stakeholders, in the news reports, this relation became a site of struggle between social forces. Thus, this conceptual relation appeared to be less about boundary-drawing around an unknown technology and more about the clash between the articulations serving different power networks. Yet, regardless of their use, all of these articulations remained stretched by the same pairs of disjunctive concepts: Canadian/ American, active nation (creative)/ passive nation (consumer), public interest/ commercial interest.
B). The internet affects the nation
This relation positioned the nation, as a whole, as affected by the internet. In the case of the news coverage, these alleged effects were, again, of a primarily economic nature.
Thus, the internet was portrayed as bringing economic prosperity and global leadership to 258
Canada. As previously discussed, this technologically deterministic vision positioned technology as a factor inducing change; importantly, change had the potential to be both positive and negative for the nation. Positive effects could be ensured if, and only if, the latter invested in the development of the internet so that "when we look into the electronic mirror, we see a Canadian face" (IHAC News, U74).
These alleged positive effects were two-folded: economic prosperity and 'global' leadership. It is interesting to note that this conceptual relation was mostly used by the government and industry representatives, portraying the internet as an enabler of the nation's future economic prosperity in a a "shrinking, highly competitive world" (1994
Government Strategy News, U12). These actors put forward the same image of the
'global' as a space of economic competition, pressuring the nation-state to take certain steps. Importantly, while the image of the 'global' provided a legitimation for certain actions, the discourse of nationalism provided the means through which these actions were made acceptable to the audiences. Thus, Stentor and Industry Canada described the information highway as "a national system of high-tech information links will soon be as important to Canada's economy as a cross-country railway was in the 19th century" (1994
Government Strategy News, U16). Similarly, in the coverage of the IHAC and the NBTF proceedings, the internet's ability to help the nation by creating more jobs and more profit-making opportunities for Canadian products (IHAC News, U5, 19) was described by comparison to the impact of railways, highways, airlines, telecoms and broadcasting
(NBTF News, U41,60).
The potential benefits of the internet as an "economic cornerstone" (1994
Government Strategy News, U17) were not to be taken for granted. In line with the 259 paradoxical co-existence of technological determinism and human agency described earlier (Young, 2003), the internet (and by extension the 'global' technoeconomic order of which the internet was a part) was seen advancing regardless of the nation's will; yet, the nation retained the choice of being an active player or merely a passive consumer. This choice became positioned as a collective national responsibility; this discursive move cannot be divorced from the neo-liberal economic ideology, which positions wealth and well-being as the result of individual choices. Geographer Linda McDowell noted that wealth became reframed as an "opportunity" for a prosperity that was always dependent on rational choices on the market (2004, p. 146). Rationality became understood as profit-maximization; thus, the rational actor made decisions aimed at maximizing wealth.
In a similar way, the voices in the newspaper articles positioned the necessity of a collective investment in the building of the internet as a matter of a rational choice between two alternatives: "If [the internet] doesn't develop in Canada, if we're not in the forefront, then we're going to be trailing the pack" (1994 Government Strategy News,
U18).
This economic framing of the internet trumps all other possible benefits. Still, some got mentioned, such as improving the overall life of Canadians by improving
Canadians' access to health care, education, government services and culture (e.g. IHAC
News, U33, 40, 43; NBTF News, U72) However, in the context of the analyzed units, these socio-cultural benefits were not widely explored. In fact, the news on this issue mainly quoted government, industry officials or the reports202. One of the most discussed
202 Although this may in fact be a consequence of the professional standards of news reporting (the idea of striving for an unbiased reporting), the fact remains that the news stones often reproduce the articulations provided by the government or the industry Professional standards often coexist with an increased dependence on the press events manufactured by communication specialists on behalf of particular actors 260 social effects was the alleged nation-building effect of the internet. Thus, the information highway was described as crucial to the nation's "future unity" (IHAC News, U12). Like the railway, the internet was portrayed as a tool connecting people to their 'imagined community': "This time, the band linking Canadians will be made of glass" (IHAC News,
U33; also IHAC News, U40, 43). In the context of Canadian nationalism, the railway has become a symbol of the now taken-for-granted "historical 'national dream' of social unity to be accomplished through technological achievement" (Adria 2010, p. 45).
Yet again, this articulation was occasionally contested. An editorialist from the
National Post in particular was very critical of articulating broadband as "an exercise in nation-building" (NBTF News, U70). This critique had to be understood as part of the transformation in the press coverage from the mid 1990s to the time of the broadband initiative. This transformation, mentioned in the case of the previous conceptual relations, involved a distancing from the versions put forward by the government and the industry.
Although the benefits of broadband were not under debate, critics turned against the nationalist rhetoric on the grounds that it was masking the government's subservience to the industry. Disputing the need for public investment in broadband, this commentator framed his critique by challenging the government's understanding of what 'Canadians want':
"Why should Canadians care if broadband connections don't arrive in Inuvik any
time soon? Or in Churchill, Ont, for that matter. Both communities already have
inexpensive dial-up Internet access [...] In a kind of nationalistic trumping of the
project's wonky economics, much of the task force report is devoted to limp flag-
waving. Repeated references are made to the importance of broadband as a way of 261
bringing together a far-flung country. While Canada is indeed thinly populated, it
is a big leap from there to deciding that Canadians everywhere therefore need
high-speed Internet connections. Why not low-speed Internet connections? Why
not fly-overs with bush planes dragging maple-leaf banners?" (NBTF News,
U70).
At the same time, on many occasions, the press merely took over the formulations offered by the industry or the government. A good example was the repetitive mantra
"internet for all Canadians", launched by the NBTF and mentioned in almost every article contained in the analyzed sample. Regardless of whether the voices adopting this formula were supporting or resisting it, the formula became emblematic for the discussion as a whole.
Finally, the last aspect of the relation of agency described here was that of the internet's potential to make the nation a world leader. In this case, the 'global' became the space where the nation could provide itself economically and gain a leadership status.
This image of the 'global' is again one permeated by the idea of the free market; this allegedly constituted the environment within which nation-states exist and function. Yet, this environment is, in most cases, imagined solely in relation the United States; the latter was both a model that Canada should emulate, and a potential threat to Canada's own success and agency in building its own internet. As Bell Canada's chief executive remarked in response to the mergers between cable and telephone companies in the
United States in the mid 1990s, "There's a race on for global leadership in telecommunications [...] If we want to be among the leaders, we must move ahead now"
(inFlavellel993, Gl). 262
Embracing technology as an economic tool was thus positioned as an advantage that will make Canada compete with other industrialized economies. The internet was the means through which Canada could become a profitable brand-name for advanced technologies; in line with neo-liberal economic theories, this articulation constructed
Canada as a responsible agent, seeking profit-maximization in a global marketplace. This specific type of nation-branding sought to bring together the interests of the industry and the idea of public interest, in what Melissa Aronczyk described as a communication strategy directed at both domestic and international audiences in an effort to gain access to capital, to accumulate international legitimacy and authority, and to foster domestic consensus and patriotism (Aronczyk, 2008, p. 2).
7.5 Summary
Although both policy reports and their news coverage relied on the same four types of conceptual relations between 'internet', 'nation' and 'global', their function was different.
Thus, in the news coverage, these relations were linked in a variety of articulations that were directly competing with each other for stabilizing the networks of meaning through which the internet should be conceptualized. Similar to the policy reports, the articulations presented in the news reports brought together nationalism and neo-liberal globalization discourses; this coupling should not be understood as permanent. In fact, the metaphorical wrapping of the Canadian flag around the internet can be used to articulate a neoliberal vision, but also to resist it. The question however is what articulations will become dominant; although this thesis does not follow the discursive evolution of these relations within the same social sphere, I argue that the interviews 263 discussed next are able to bring to light some of the ways in which these conceptual relations have made their way into mundane understandings of the internet.
Importantly, the policy documents and the news stories remained consistent with each other, not only in terms of sharing the same agenda of discussion, or the same articulations, but also in terms of the flow of ideas and power relations between them. In other words, the analysis of the discursive dimension showed that the two spheres are 'in tune' with each other, even when there was disagreement between the specific plans for distributing resources across the social landscape. Thus, while it was true that the press presented a plurality of competing voices, struggling to mobilizing audiences around their own articulations of the 'Canadian internet', this competition did not challenge the agenda of discussion, or the reliance on nationalism to make sense of the new medium.
As further argued in Chapter 9, nationalism can be understood as a hegemonic discourse, co-opting our understanding of the world around us by inscribing elements of change with a national dimension. By raising national boundaries around the internet, this new medium became 'bounded' as the 'Canadian information highway" and thus made relevant to Canada as whole, as both an agent of change and as an object to be shaped by and for the nation. By imagining the internet as 'Canadian', we can locate its infrastructure in a geo-political space, and we can think of digital content as a reflection of national culture. By imagining it as an economic tool, we can (temporarily) accept the overlap between nationalism and neo-liberal globalization discourses, seeing the 'nation' as an economic actor, where individual profit-making accomplishments become a source of pride for each member of the nation. As for the internet, these articulations construct it 264 as an essentially nation-building tool; subsequent debates about its particular shape or form are secondary to this principle of classification. Chapter 8: National Identity and Spaces of Agency: Analyzing the Interviews
The popularization of the internet, discussed in Chapter 1, has articulated the internet with the image of the 'global village', relying on discourses of an inevitable, though largely beneficial globalization to make sense of what this medium symbolically represented. "The Net's envelope is the whole planet" wrote internet-guru Nicholas
Negroponte in one of the early issues of Wired, depicting how the internet will allegedly transform social relations, replacing localism by global interest-based virtual groups
(Negroponte, 1996).
However, these articulations are not necessarily an indicator that nationalism is entirely absent in our understanding of the internet in everyday life. As proposed in the previous chapter, the 'nationalization' of the internet as an object of discourse in policy and media spheres has often become inconspicuous. In the interviews discussed here, respondents were asked to take their national identity into account and to explore the ways in which it may play into their conceptualization and use of the internet.
Respondents both reflexively engaged with the significance of nationalism for meaning- making and unreflexively used it to make sense of things and perform particular subject positions. Nationalism, technological determinism and a discourse centred on individual agency were all relied upon in talking about the internet. It is in this process of'drawing upon' these discourses that ideologies/ discourses are reproduced and their effects can be observed. For John Thompson, it is precisely this everyday meaning-making dimension that constitutes the "primary locus" of ideology (1984, p. 36). Through these interviews, we can see how what appears as a macro discourse in the analysis of the policy reports 266 and press stories becomes (re)articulated for particular purposes specific to the communicative encounter on a micro level. As already suggested, the link between the micro and the macro levels remains a crucial theoretical problem.
This chapter opens with an overall picture of the interviews. In the second part, I will present an analysis of these interviews by focusing on how respondents have engaged with three types of conceptual relations (see Chapter 4).
8.1 Overview of the interviews
Because the interviews have been considered here as quite different from the texts produced in the policy and media sphere (see Chapter 4), their analysis has been slightly different. To summarize, the interviews have been examined by interpreting the discussions provided by participants in response to three main types of conceptual relations proposed by the researcher. Importantly, the interviews were constructed as an exploratory exercise, where respondents interacted with the interviewer to articulate their identity in relation to the interview setting, to Canadian nationalism or to other discourses of relevance to them (e.g. individualism, technological determinism, globalization). As we shall see, this explanatory setting also allowed respondents to reflect upon their own unconscious routines and to critically assess them in relation to the reproduction of nationalism203.
In line with previous research, respondents incorporated their offline world into their internet use and regarded this use as the source of new activities - and even of new/
203 Many of my interviewees experienced moments of insight - or sudden conscious awareness of an association - when prompted to think about their national identity in relation to their view of the interview. As Janet Metcalfe defines it, insight (or intuition) refers to a psychological process through which we gain a sudden understanding of something, an understanding that often involves a restructuring of thought associated with an 'Aha!' moment (2000, p. 363). 267 altered identities (Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2005). For example, one of the respondents argued that the internet allowed her to develop a new identity where her
Canadianess and her race were not seen as challenging one another204. The participants in this project often considered national identity as significant in their internet use (or came to reflect upon this during our conversation), primarily in terms of their relation to online content. In this case, national identity was understood as a context or a perspective through which people, most of the time unconsciously, performed their own identity online and 'read' other people/ websites. Importantly, this 'national lens' was not only a way of knowing and thinking, but also a material infrastructure (domain names, corporate websites, legal frameworks) prompting my respondents to discuss the 'national borders' of the internet.
8.1.1 Images of the internet
Most respondents defined the internet in relation to both communication and information.
They often spoke of the shifting boundary between their online and offline lives, with some of their favourite activities being moved entirely online (e.g. TV watching), while others relying on the internet to supplement offline practices (e.g. shopping).
The prevailing image throughout the sample was that of the internet as a repository of information, or a tool for specific activities. This understanding is not dissimilar from the economic articulation of the internet proposed by the policy reports and the news stories; although for the respondents the internet was not understood in terms of profit-making, it was nevertheless seen in an instrumental manner. Interestingly
204 The respondent offered this as an alternative to her offline life, where her national identity was put under question by other people because of her race. 268 enough, only one respondent challenged this view, arguing that the internet was the product of Western culture and social interaction patterns; although she did not question this instrumental understanding, she did point to the fact that technology (but also our conceptualizations of it) come to reflect ethical choices.
On the other hand, understanding the internet as a tool of information and communication made is easier for respondents to think of this medium as disregarding social or symbolic boundaries: for example, Joe described the internet as "a way to get information and a way to send information [...]. But yeah, it's a way to make it possible to instantly communicate with everybody that I know essentially and also to know about what's happening in the world instantly, [...] and entertainment as well". In this fragment, the internet appeared as a transportation corridor, facilitating the transmission of information; in this picture, time and geographical distance were rendered irrelevant. In his work The Culture of Time and Space, Stephen Kern (1983) argued that technologies such as the clock or the steam engine entailed new modes of thinking: time became public, standardized and homogeneous, while distance became smaller, projecting a sense of world unity. In spite of its technological determinism, Kern's argument is interesting here, as it suggests that the image of the internet as a tool for the transmission of information and for communication do speak of the centrality of time/ space in our everyday understanding of the world; the emphasis on 'instantaneity' and the 'world' speaks of a world in which borders remain very much real and in which time is a precious resource.
As it can be seen from Table 16, the images of the internet that respondents articulated rehearsed some of the metaphors associated with the popularization of the 269 medium (e.g. information highway, library, repository of knowledge); others invoked the perceived features of effects of the internet as a tool (e.g. instantaneity, participation, democracy). Finally, others evaluated the internet in terms of its perceived ethical effects
(socially desirable, e.g. democracy, versus socially negative, e.g. Western monopoly or digital divides). The significance of these images stems from their relation to an understanding of technology tensed by a juxtaposition of the belief in technological progress (permeated by an instrumental rationality) with the worry that this technological progress is no longer held in check by ethical and social concerns (e.g. Feenberg, 1999).
Table 16: Frequency of the images of the internet proposed by respondents (all answers paraphrased)
Images of the internet Frequency mages of the internet Frequency Internet is information 22 nternet is community/ conversation Internet is communication 12 nternet is a set of connected services Internet is connection 6 nternet is participation Internet is a tool 4 nternet is transit system Internet is international 4 nternet is Western monopoly Internet is a set of connected tubes 2 nternet is all encompassing
Internet is American \2- nternet is anonymous Internet is corporate 2 nternet is broad Internet is democracy nternet is divisive Internet is freedom nternet is lack of context Internet is instantaneity nternet is choice Internet is a library nternet is uniformity of opinions Internet is socialism nternet is wild west (untamed) Internet is knowledge
8.1.2 National identification
The respondent's own construction of national identity was an important factor influencing the way in which the conceptual relation between the 'internet', the 'nation' and the 'global' was understood. Fourteen respondents identified as Canadian, with five of 270 them emphasizing their family's continuous presence in Canada over various generations.
Five respondents addressed my request for national identification through a citizenship frame, identifying themselves in terms of their multiple citizenships and then clarifying to which of these countries they felt they belonged. Eight respondents treated the question in relation to ethnicity: four saw themselves as Canadian with a particular ethnic lineage, while four others hyphenated their identity. These respondents often constructed the
'internet' as a site accommodating different ethnicities and races, invoking the image of the 'Canadian nation' as a multicultural, multi-ethnic umbrella. Three interviewees emphasized their linguistic affiliation (two Anglophone and one Francophone), while two others defined themselves primarily in relation to their province of birth
(Newfoundlander, Quebecois).
Some interviewees articulated a strong understanding of national identity as a deep layer of one's self that defied further inquiry: "I think that what makes a Canadian is more about soul and nationality and pride and the things that are intangible" (Diane).
However, others were hesitant to fully subscribe to the national, ethnic or racial label. For instance, Samantha pointed out that she is a "conditional Quebecoise": "I can't seem to define myself as Quebecoise - which I do, but conditional, because I have a lot of problems with the xenophobia I guess. It's hard to say to what extent it's being Canadian, or just being who I am, and kind of thinking about all these issues all the time, in my work. I don't know". Samantha questioned what she regarded as a constraining label; throughout our discussion, she often brought into the discussion the question of being
'Canadian', something she constructed in terms of a tension between, on the one hand, the cultural context one gets by virtue of being born and raised in a particular society and, on 271 the other hand, the individual's family background and personal context, which problematizes the 'common sense' knowledge achieved through socialization.
Like Samantha, other interviewees engaged in a negotiation of the meaning of their 'Canadianess' in relation to a humanistic perspective. In such cases, individuals often performed a cosmopolitan identity, where the feeling of 'being human' and the reflexive questioning of the socio-historical context of'national identity' were offered as strong counter-balances to one's almost inevitable national identification (inevitable by virtue of being born within a pre-existing national context which shaped one's perspective in little, yet unconscious ways).
8.1.3 Nationalism in everyday life
The link between the way in which we may view national identity and the discourse of nationalism is, of course, a complex one. As Jonathan Hearn remarked, "given that people often find themselves cast into a world where national categories are pressed upon them as means of knowing and evaluating others, it is not surprising that people find ways to appropriate these for self-making" (2007, p. 666). Indeed, as outlined above, respondents both made sense of the world - and, when prompted, of the internet - through the category of the 'nation', and creatively appropriated this category for their own communicative purposes. Yet, this category cannot be divorced from the wider discourse which seeks to define it in terms of its features and social significance. Perhaps paradoxically, nationalism is both an external context within which individuals negotiate their own take to the 'nation', and a discourse reproduced through these micro dynamics. 272
How should we understand this link between the plurality of articulations evidenced in the interviews and Canadian nationalism understood as a macro discourse?
Given that almost all interviewees were in the higher education sector, it was less surprising that some of them engaged at times with a form of this relation between the micro and the macro aspects of nationalism. To a certain extent, this constitutes a particular feature of the sample, something that cannot be easily generalized. As
TorontoStudent explained, his background in history gave him an understanding of the historical processes through which something like political values and beliefs become part of a national identity: "I also come from a History background so I mean, I'm aware that these [national identity, m.n.J don't just come out of nothing; that there's a fair bit of sort of the British influence, which doesn't always make sense here politically. So I guess that's my thoughts about nationalism. I try to be critical about it and I'm wary of being too, you know, closed about the notion of the nation because I recognize there are cases where that's been quite harmful".
On other occasions however, this link between the macro and the micro dimensions was something that the researcher 'identified' in the texts. For instance, the construction of Canadianess in opposition to what is perceived to be the 'Other' of the nation (namely, the 'American identity') was widely discussed in the literature on
Canadian nationalism. Respondents often invoked the theme of the 'Other' in explaining the ways in which national identity was relevant online: as a social feature which permeated the production/ consumption of content. Table 17 summarizes the ways in which the 'Other' was constructed in the interviews; as expected, 'American identity' ranks first. 273
Table 17: The use of'Us versus Other' in the interviews (all answers paraphrased)
The "Other" of Canadian identity 1 Frequency American vs. Canadian I25 Asian vs. Canadian 2 French vs. Canadian 12 Japanese vs. Canadian ~ 122 Not available T _ _ British vs. Canadian 1 European vs. Canadian 1
German Swiss vs. Canadian 1 French Canadian vs. English Canadian 1
The 'Other' was often invoked to legitimize one's preference for 'national content' or one's fears about the imperialistic tendencies of the internet, understood (like television and radio before it) as a carrier of American culture. In this way, speakers avoided the possible charge of 'being nationalist' or parochial, by providing an allegedly comrnon- sensical motivation (the American threat) for their choices. In such cases, nationalism worked in the background, by providing an allegedly shared acceptance of this 'threat' as an external reason why people do certain things. At the same time, nationalism also provided a system of classification through which the internet (content, use, ownership) could be spoken about. In this case, the internet could be classified as Canadian content vs. American content, Canadian use vs. American use, or Canadian ownership vs.
American ownership.
8.2 The conceptual relations
The question of understanding in everyday life remains complex (see Douglas, 1971;
Pollner, 1987; Potter, 1996; Semin & Gergen, 1990). One aspect of the problem is that 274 understanding is itself shaped by our socialization, which ties our knowledge of things to a social structure and a moral universe (Speier, 1971)205. As Martyn Barrett argued, children "are inducted into particular cognitive representations of their own nation and state and into particular cultural practices" (2007, p. 17); this process shapes in a profound way children's sense of belonging and emotional attachment to the nation,
"engendering ... a sense of who they are, influencing how they see themselves, and impacting on how they locate themselves into the wider world" (Barrett, 2007, p. 17).
In spite of that, however, it is extremely hard to generalize what aspects of this socialization will remain taken for granted, and what will be reflexively engaged with.
Furthermore, other discourses emphasizing the 'global' or the 'humanistic' dimensions are also part and parcel of our modern day social structure (e.g. Appadurai 1996). For example, the increased presence of second generation immigrants in the context of established nation-states has been described as introducing, primarily through the internet, the transnational dimension as a central part of modern social imaginaries
(Andersson, 2010).
To complicate things further, in everyday life, people do not merely have to understand something; they also have to communicate it, thus engaging in and sustaining social relations with others. Understanding and social performance are intrinsically connected. In this context, nationalism may provide a background of shared meaning and resources for the successful performance of one's identity; it may also facilitate the negotiation of meaning (e.g. by providing metonymic shortcuts or quick generalizations) and of agency within the existing power structure.
205 Speier defines socialization as the "acquisition of interactional competencies", including the awareness of a social structure (1971, p. 189). 275
The next sections outline the articulations put forward by respondents; these articulations relied on three of the conceptual relations discussed in Chapters 6 and 7: existence, qualification and agency (see also the description of the method of analysis for interviews in Chapter 4).
8.2.1 Relations of qualification: a Canadian online space
The interview question - "What would a Canadian online space look like?" - directly asked the participants to imagine an online space defined by its national dimension. The modal verb 'would' elicited conjecture or opinion ("would modal v.", 2008), something I emphasized during the interviews. The assumption here was that participants would find the question meaningful, particularly by relating it to discussions around 'Canadian content' in the case of other media. Out of the twenty-nine respondents, nine stated they were not sure what a 'Canadian online space' would be; fifteen described it and five concluded such a space did not exist (at least for the time being). What was the meaning of this engagement with the conceptual relation? To reflect on this question, the articulations that respondents constructed by using this conceptual relations are discussed next.
Questioning the 'Canadian online space': The nine respondents who were unsure what such a space would be tried to present the source of their uncertainty. In their responses, some respondents relied on a technologically deterministic discourse to depict the internet as a tool; other challenged the qualifier 'Canadian', explaining they were unsure what it 'stood' for. Thus, these respondents produced three major articulations of the 276 relation between the 'internet' and the 'nation': the internet was constructed as a space of information, as an individual medium, or as an American space.
• The internet is information:
Nina explained that the internet was a source of information, and as such, she could not associate it with the 'nation': "Iguess I don 7 see the internet as much as ... like, sort of nationally identified as much as more just a source of information for me". The implied dichotomy between information and (cultural) values was something that came up in the interviews in various forms, as many respondents associated the internet with information and thought of information as something factual, beyond any normative judgements. In his discussion of information theory and cybernetics, Von Foerster (1980, p. 18) notes that the concept of 'information' stood for a signal transmitted through a medium; as such
'information' appeared to be neutral and devoid of any cultural aspects. This is also something that Nina's explanation hinted to: as information, the internet had no national boundaries.
Yet, as it turned out, for Nina, as for other respondents, this view of information coexisted with an understanding of content as shaped by national values. A few sentences later, Nina explained that if given a choice, she always chose 'Canadian content' online over content coming from other national context. What was, then, the difference between
'information' and 'content'? And where was the 'nation' a relevant category in evaluating it? Ronald Day remarked that the modern status of'information' as a form of knowledge has resulted from its association with "factuality and quantitative measure"; this image of
'information' became a "privileged, even totalitarian, form of knowledge and discourse" 277
(2001, p. 2). Similarly, in this case, the internet-as-information was seen as incompatible with the 'nation' as a category for approaching cultural content; information was imagined as something distinct from cultural content. This articulation, I argue, is extremely important (if not also worrisome) in terms of its epistemological implications: the category of'information' invokes an allegedly objective (and as such universal) form of
'knowing' the world; the internet in this context is an enabler of the unrestricted circulation of this objective form of knowledge.
• The internet as an individual medium
Although Yvette knew of many websites that focused on 'Canadiana', she did not see them as constituted a 'Canadian online space'. A space, she clarified, was something that brought these sites together, offering them as a whole. She further added that such a space "could be kind of a major government initiative, but it might flop too", mostly because such an initiative would be a "managed discourse, just still sort of an editorial board and so on. It wouldn't be as open as it could be I guess [...] I don't feel like they're necessarily - there's not kind of a 2.0 element". In this articulation, a Canadian online space was meaningful only as a state initiative; state intervention was, for Yvette, the tool able to draw the the boundaries of an identifiable national space online.
This articulation was partly connected to Yvette's earlier explanation that the
Canadian nation was the product of a top-down nation-building process, through which people who came from everywhere and settled on a vast territory were brought together into a 'nation'. Yvette's explanation is reminiscent here of the famous work of Eugene
Weber From Peasants into Frenchmen (1976): the nation was seen as a result of state 278 intervention. Reminiscent, yet maybe not the identical, since Yvette further compared the state-managed online space to the 'Web .2.0' quality of the internet: in other words,
Yvette saw the internet as an enabler of organic community-building. Her doubts as to whether a government-run 'Canadian online space' would work were, in this context, doubts over whether something that's purposely managed for a nation-building purpose would be successful on the internet, now positioned as the 'technology-of-the-people'
(van Dijck & Nieborn, 2009, p. 858). This image of the internet as a space of grass-roots level collaboration is, in itself, widely compatible with the neo-liberal emphasis on individual choice and responsibility: online communities are seen as an expression of individual choice (see for instance Rheingold, 2000a)206. Thus, Yvette's articulation speaks of an understanding of the social space online as the alternative to the 'nation', understood as a top-down, state managed community.
• The internet as an American space
Alyse also used the image of the 'organic' versus 'managed' communities, but re- articulated it differently. A national space, she explained, was a space that appeared organically, as people spontaneously recognized themselves as a nation. The internet, on the other hand, was mostly corporate driven; the popular websites where Canadians may come together - like the "Canadian corners of'Facebook" - were commercial in nature; for Alyse, this did "not encourage community as much".
In this case, the internet appeared as a space of control, prohibitive to the allegedly natural processes through which nations are formed. Importantly, later on Alyse
206 Often juxtaposed to the image of ethnic groups, where inclusion/ exclusion into the group is seen as informed by one's lineage. 279 described this corporate control as 'American'; at this point, her explanation explicitly borrowed from the repertoire of Canadian nationalism on the United States. She positioned American control as limiting the ability of developing a truly Canadian online space. Importantly however, Alyse did not see this American threat as eroding the
'Canadian nation', but merely as preventing it from forming its own online space.
For other respondents however, the American control of the online space posed a crucial question to Canadians: since Canadians seemed to be happy consuming American content, then exactly what was the difference between Americans and Canadians in the first place? This question however did not imply that the two are not distinct national groups; it merely challenged that which set them apart. In this case, this difference was not seen as sufficient enough to create strong national boundaries online. It is interesting to point out that in this articulation, only the qualifier 'American' was mentioned as relevant; all the other possible 'national cultures' (whether Anglophone or not) were completely absent.
Describing the 'Canadian online space': The five interviewees who did not think such a space existed explaining their position by placing the two concepts ('internet' and 'nation') into incompatible systems of classification. In so doing, these respondents relied on the image of the internet as a site of individual agency and as a 'global' space, and on the image of technology as neutral in respect to social processes.
Thus, for two of the interviewees, the 'Canadian online space' did not exist because the internet was seen as a space of personal choice. They offered an articulation of the internet similar to the ones already described above; yet, those articulations were 280 used to explain why the 'nation' and the 'internet' were incompatible. In this context however, through these articulations, the respondents distanced themselves from a
'nationalist' outlook on the world and performed an identity rooted in cosmopolitan and humanistic values. Thus, Samantha talked about this in relation to her experience of living abroad: her own internet use was mostly on a "personal level", namely to keep in touch with friends and family in Canada. She compared this type of use to her friend's:
" my friend spends a lot of time, I think every day he looks at hometown newspapers and kind of catches up on what's going on in his home country and hometown. I didn't really do that". In her description, the internet enabled the communication with family and friends; yet, Samantha was aware that this was her choice, driven by her own interests.
Although she felt Canadian, she was also performing a cosmopolitan identity. Samantha thus offered an image of the internet as a space of personal agency; internet content and use could well have a national dimension, but not everybody subscribed to it.
For Diane however, the internet was primarily a 'global' place; Diane however took a lot of pride in her 'Canadianess', which she saw as something of a metaphysical nature (a soul one has). However, the internet was for her a tool with a global reach: "I think it is called the world wide web for a reason. J think that the entire world has access to everything and that it doesn't matter where you are, you can connect to Canadian
[content] or you can feel Canadian even if you're living in Australia" (Diane).
Importantly, in this articulation, the 'global world' appears as one of national spaces: thus, if one felt strongly about being Canadian, one would use the internet to nurture that.
Last, but not least, other interviewees saw the 'global' dimension as an inner feature of the internet. In this articulation, national identity was seen as a possible 281 influence on the understanding of content or the choice of websites, but ultimately the internet remained conceptualized as a technological infrastructure, independent of such social values. As Deb explained, this understanding of the internet is something she took for granted: "I sort of instinctively think... of the internet as a global space. I think, that's the whole point", adding that she doesn't see the internet as "a cultural space [...] I think of it as a purveyor of that, a delivery mechanism for that, but I don't think of it as being cultural content in itself. But I think of Canadian television as being cultural content". In this explanation that Deb juxtaposed the internet to television: in the case of the latter, the association between the medium and the nation was more easily accepted (yet, television, as a technology, can be equally imagined along the same 'global' lines as the internet).
Gene also constructed the internet as a neutral tool, yet his articulation was slightly different than Deb's. Gene positioned himself as a 'techie'207, and from this position explained that the internet had two dimensions: a social aspect, consisting of computer-mediated interaction, and a technical aspect, which he considered as not only value-free, but independent of any social component. Thus, when asked about a Canadian online space, Gene proposed a technical understanding of such a virtual space, formed by the domain names ending in '.ca' (henceforth dot-ca): "Other than the fact that we have the ca domain, you know that identifies things as Canadian but other than that I - it just seems like a -just a naming convention in part of this whole worldwide web and I haven't thought - tried to think about a future where a national identity is apart of it, you know". Gene's rejection of the idea of a 'Canadian online space' rested on constructing the internet as a technical infrastructure with a social layer. He saw the internet as an
207An expert in technology ("techie, n.", 2008). 282 universal technology; this made national borders irrelevant, particularly since the domain name system was, in his opinion, merely a convention. Furthermore, this convention, in itself a social intervention upon the technical layer, did not seem to affect the technology itself but only its use/ deployment.
Finally, fifteen interviewees accepted the relation of qualification, listing the things they associated with a 'Canadian' space (see Table 18 below). Perhaps not surprisingly, they mostly saw the websites of news media as forming the 'Canadian online space'. As proposed in Chapter 5, the stabilization of broadcasting as a nation-building tool seems to be achieved, for the time being, raising the question of whether ten or fifteen years down the road, the internet will not be conceptualized as a nation-building tool as well. As I argued next, such a question seems extremely relevant given the increasing efforts to draw national boundaries on the internet at the level of both software (e.g. different websites for different 'national' audiences) and hardware (e.g. firewalls, national domain name systems).
Table 18: Frequency of elements listed as part of the 'Canadian online space' (all answers paraphrased)
Elements Frequency Media (CBC explicitly mentioned 6 times) 12 Institutional sites (government, museums, travel, shopping) 9 National arrangement of the infrastructure (e g dot-ca) 9 Content aspects (bilinguahsm, symbols, dialogue) 5 Content related to Canada's geography or history 4 Canadian producers 3
Thus, several answers brought up the idea that the internet, through applications such as
Facebook, was becoming increasingly "compartmentalized" into national spheres. As 283
James explained, "everyone has access to it, but it still kind of filters itself so that people are connected on their own sort of shared network that has some sort of geographic location to them". Similarly, Re described how this compartmentalization is part of the software design: "So, I'm on Facebook, or I'm on a web page, and I have to choose a country, then I'll choose Canada because that's where I live. So it kind of makes me associate myself with one country or another". In this articulation, the 'nation' became the classification system informing the internet's infrastructure; in such cases, the 'internet' itself was interpellating users as members of the nation, thus prompting them to think of themselves and of that space online in terms of national boundaries.
However, from the point of view of the user, the choice appeared as a pragmatic one (e.g. you either choose, or you cannot join) and not necessarily connected to an
'inner' national identity208. Nevertheless, the 'compartmentalization' of the internet, driven by its commercialization, reified national spaces. One of the interviewee explained that the internet worked on the basis of specific addresses, which are organized by country.
The 'Canadian online space' could be conceptualized as a visual representation (a map) of
IP addresses from Canada or any other country: "so we have this aspect of it, Canada does have a Canada only space, that's numbers only given to Canadian companies and
Canadian government" (John).
For another interviewee, this 'nationalization' of the internet was driven by the big
ICT companies. Sydney observed that when trying to access Google from Canada, one is automatically directed to the dot-ca version of it. However, as she further explained, these
208This tension between pragmatic choice and the national lens imposed by the infrastructure was often articulated in my interviewee's discussion of online shopping: "But again, 1 use amazon.ca not because it's Canadian, but because I have to because I'm in Canada because it's a very technical requirement" (John). 284 nationally-customized search engines seem to restrict the user's capacity to access information: "I know a lot of my Taiwanese friends use Yahoo Taiwan to search [...] and they are able to retrieve more information than I could with Google just because of the language barrier". Sydney introduced language as an important social aspect that affects the 'invisible' technological layer (in this case, language was part of the algorithm through which Google returned the search results).
Throughout the interviews, many respondents pointed to language as one of the markers of national identity; one respondent, who self-identified as French-Canadian, argued that language was segregating internet spaces and experiences. However, by virtue of setting boundaries, language was also creating a feeling of'home': in the context of a perceived dominant English internet, the French internet was seen as small, intimate and familiar. In Sydney's story however, language was a barrier that technology could not surpass. The national compartmentalization of the internet thus appeared as replicating the alleged communicative boundaries set by the nation (Deutsch, 1953). The resulting image was that of an internet made up of national/ linguistic spaces of knowledge.
Finally, another important marker of the 'Canadian online space' was 'culture'.
Thus, it was not only that cultural institutions were regarded as symbols of the nation; the specific features (bilingualism, symbols) of online content or the issues under discussion were also markers of'Canadianess'. Thus, respondents often pointed to the symbols associated with Canada, such as the flag, the maple leaf, hockey, visible bilingual options, multiculturalism, tolerance and openness. Others however talked about an elusive 'Canadian perspective', something that both shapes content and is recognizable as such by the readers. When pushed to defined it, some respondents invoked values such as 285
'liberal', 'multicultural' or 'tolerant'; others juxtaposed this perspective to the 'American' one.
To briefly summarize, the relation of qualification was either challenged (deemed as not meaningful), or accepted and then elaborated upon. In the first case, the rejection was justified through three narratives: the internet was seen as a space of information where the nation did not make sense as a category of classification; the internet was seen as a space of personal agency, in opposition to the image of the top-down, centralized nation- building process; and, the internet was seen as controlled by American corporations.
When the relation of qualification was accepted, some respondents argued that a
'Canadian online space' did not exist because the internet was a global or a personal medium; as a technology, the internet was seen as neutral to nationality. Those for whom such a space already existed pointed to media and other institutions as examples, as well as to the national organization of technology and the national dimension of content.
8.2.2 Relations of existence: the nation on the internet
Another interview question proposed a conceptual relation of existence: the nation on the internet. Overlapping with the articulations offered in the case of the relation of qualification, respondents both relied upon and contested the 'nation' as a category of classification. Respondents constantly shifted between resisting the essentialization and generalization performed through the use of the 'nation' as a category of classification, and making use of it to position themselves and to explain things when engaged in a conversation. It is in this shift that the contingent nature of the category was obscured 286 and the nation appeared as a natural feature of human life. As one interviewee remarked, the nation is often recognized in an unconscious manner and appears unimportant in the context of meaning-making processes:"little things, even just the symbols and things like that [...] and again it's certainly not at a conscious level but automatically, I guess, by virtue of being a Canadian [.. ] as soon as you see the maple leaf somewhere on the page, it kind of... you know, it's in me, as a Canadian, some reaction of some sort of identification" (Samantha). Yet, in spite of this refiexivity, the role of the material structure in the process of reading or producing online content remains hidden from further reflection. Under what conditions do we engage reflexively with the nation as a category of classification and why? When we are inclined to simply use it without any further qualification? What are the implications of this co-existence in terms of the reproduction of ideology? The table below details the elements that respondents offered as reminders of the nation online.
Table 19: Elements explicitly mentioned by respondents as reminders of national identity online (all answers paraphrased)
Elements Frequency Content (issues discussed, perspective, references) 119 Country-specific domain names (dot-ca) 17 News 115 Location (places, geographical restrictions) 13 Linguistic issues (choice of words, bilingualism, style, slang, spelling etc.) 112 Style of communication (cultural differences) , 11 Shopping (ownership, currency) 9 Ownership of a site 8 Symbols (maple leaf, flag) 8 Advertising 4 Google - country specific search 4 Legal frameworks (nudity, hate speech) 3 Practical information (weather, maps, directions) 3 Cultural understanding of technology 1 287
In their responses, interviewees used the concept of the 'nation' to classify internet content and as well as its reception209. They also continued the articulation of the internet's infrastructure as 'national'.
Content: Several respondents talked about the things that signalled that they were dealing with Canadian (or for that matter, American) content. An interesting suggestion was that of content written from a 'Canadian perspective'. Such a perspective consisted not only of specific references to places or people known to be 'Canadian', but also of values and ways of understanding that were considered 'national'.
For example, Ruby discussed how, in her own contributions to a blog on environmental issues, she wrote from the vantage point of this 'Canadian perspective': "7 kind of think that Canadians are really - are kind of more conscious of [environmental issues]... I was reading an American blog today, it was like a youth website about different issues, and I just found their views to be so much different than a blog that's doing this here would write. I just saw a really big difference". The nation appeared here as a principle of knowledge which affects the content layer of the internet. Yet, when confronted with the 'Canadian' or 'American' perspective, respondents also talked about the emotional dimension of identifying 'national' content: websites 'felt' Canadian and thus were more seen as trustworthy (Colleen).
209I am using 'content' and 'reception' as themes emerging out of how respondents talked about the reminders of the nation online: in the first case, they talked about things that appeared to them as present in the text; in the second, they talked about things that appeared to them as stemming from their own perception of content. However, the relation between what is in a text and how we interpret a text is a complex one; my use of these two themes does not refer to the academic debates of this relation. A third theme - that of the nation as classifying ownership of sites and services online - has not been detailed here since its presence in the interviews was marginal. 288
Language was another important marker of the nation mentioned in the interviews. When two neighbouring nation-states share the same official language, the construction of the nation based on linguistic criteria is more difficult; thus, more resources have to be invested (by people, by institutions) to create a linguistic boundary between the two nation-states210. Several respondents talked about linguistic cues
(vocabulary, slang) as markers of Canadian, American or British content. At the same time, the presence of bilingual options (English/French) also signalled 'Canadianess'.
Finally, any language that was not English constituted a major barrier, and thus brought the reader's national identity to the forefront.
For example, Samantha talked about the moment when, stumbling upon a Yahoo page in French, she suddenly realized that there was a French internet. Samantha identified as a conditional-Quebecoise, but the majority of her internet consumption was in English; as such, this realization prompted her to think about her own relation to being
Canadian and Quebecoise. On the other hand, Julie identified as a Quebecoise and
Francophone Canadian; the French language internet gave her a feeling of being at home.
As she explained, "to me language is never just language, it's always a culture. It's always a means of interacting". Thus, French-Quebecois content provided a bounded space of comfort in an otherwise vast Anglophone internet. As these examples indicate, language remained an emotionally loaded signifier of the nation; but its meaning greatly varied with one's linguistic competency, with one's identification and with the political issues associated with each language.
2l0The case of the break-up of Serbo-Croatian after the dissolution of Yugoslavia is a good example of the political efforts to create distinct languages out of a previously common language (see Greenberg, 2000). 289
Finally, in some cases, respondents referred to things like currency or advertising as signalling the nation. In general however, although people noticed these things as markers of difference, they also felt that their importance was rather trivial: looking for national currency or for local weather was a pragmatic, not a nationalist choice. On the other hand however, this practicality was exploited by service providers, for whom the
'nation' was a principle of classification organizing services as a means to increase their success. Importantly, these dynamics speak to the importance of the ongoing exchange between thought and the material infrastructures, themselves shaped by the 'nation' as a system of classification (see Chapter 2).
Reception: Several respondents described the nation as a lens through which they read and interacted online. Yvette explained that she often related to other people as members of national and local groups: " I definitely categorize. Like 1 definitely am thinking... this is somebody that's not ...from the same country or province as me... so I might identify them as being different from me". This identification was done through the stereotypes associated with national identity and was accompanied by a positive reinforcement of the national self (often against the perceived 'American Other'): "I'm reading the news on the internet and I look at American videos, I'll think to myself: 'Wow, I'm glad I'm not
American' [...] So I'd have my own opinions in the back of my head while reading
American news" (Shannon).
In terms of relating to online content, the nation became an often unconscious category through which online content was classified. Identifying and relating to things through this category entailed an emotional response on the reader's part. For instance, 290 one interviewee talked about how her assumptions about the nation as a shared space of expectations and interpretations influence her online behaviour When travelling, Deb purposely sought Canadian reviews: "I'll look for what Canadians have said about different international hotels, restaurants or sites, because I somehow expect that we 've got a shared understanding of words like 'comfort', 'value', 'service', 'quality;. I sort of feel that there's sort of a shared understanding. Even if I adjust accordingly, I sort of assume there's going to be a share meaning in those words" (Deb). Such expectations remained implied in the background, providing Deb - and other respondents - with a sense of familiarity: they felt they knew the context of certain issues, and as such, were able to truly 'understand'211. As another respondent put it, "Ijust know what they're talking about" (James).
Other respondents argued that consuming Canadian content was a rational thing to do: they were Canadians and, therefore, interested in all things Canadian. This explanation was often accompanied by a critique of the perceived flow of American cultural content into Canada, as well as a critique of what respondents perceived as a misplaced interest of some Canadians in American politics (at the expense of national politics)212. For example, John argued that he is generally more interested in "articles that have anything to do with Canada" because, as he explains, people tend to think that the
211 Deb may not do this in daily life: she may meet a fellow Canadian and not necessarily trust her evaluation of a hotel or of a restaurant. Yet, when online, the nation helps her place her trust; it supplements for those cues missing due to the mediated and relatively anonymous form of communication online. The generalization helps her make a decision in the context of incomplete information. 212 Some of the interviews were held at the time of the Canadian federal elections (October 2008). However since these elections were shortly followed by the US presidential elections (November 2008), many respondents engaged in discussions about the visibility of the US elections online. For some, this perceived online visibility was a source of annoyance: "I found a lot of Canadians to be, I think it was donating their status to Obama, which was really strange. I mean, what does it really mean for a Canadian to be donating status for a vote. This is something that they're really not allowed to have a part in" (Sockmonkery). 291
United States is the centre of the world, and consequently consume American content. In his articulation, he legitimized his interest in Canadian content online as a means of civic participation.
Infrastructure: The organization of online applications was also interpreted as a reminder of national identity. First, the internet was seen as organized as a virtual replica of the inter-national order, through domain names specific for each country: "The obvious thing
I think from a visual perspective are like the dot-ca domain sort of in the URL that just sort of will always stand out for me, because then you know you're dealing with the
Canadian website" (Gene).
Second, applications and services on the internet were understood as organized around national spaces. This image of the national organization of technology has already been discussed above, in the context of the relation of existence. Interviewees pointed to the national framing of the choices that websites and applications sometimes presented the users with, or even imposed upon them. For some, these choices were seen as liberating; in talking about her self-identification, Dyer had constructed her right to belong to the Canadian nation in the context of feeling that her racial background often made people question her nationality. Thus, the choice of a national identity on the internet, where she "was not restricted by external factors" (such as racial features), was seen as liberating.
Others however questioned the idea of choice altogether. Internet services were often restricted by IP address, meaning that someone identified as accessing the site from
Canada would not have access to particular content or would be redirected to the 292
'Canadian' version of the site. In such cases, there was no choice for the user. Emily remarked that while the government has no policy on restricting access on the internet,
"it's certainly the Google, ca thing which redirects you...Even if you're on... Google.com, it redirects you to Google. ca"2U. Similarly, Samantha observed that certain sites identified her location, made an assumption about her nationality, and customized their content (ads) in response to this assumption: "I certainly noticed when I went on to fblog name] and I noticed all the Canadian content... I mean, making me feel exactly at home...".
These articulations of the existence of the 'nation' on the 'internet' were tensed by an understanding of the 'nation' in relation to the 'global'. This ways in which the 'nation' seemed to invoke the 'global' dimension are indicative here of the temporary coupling of nationalism and globalization. For Yvette, the presence of the 'nation' online invoked an inter-national dimension; thus, Yvette pointed out that online, one can come across content originating from various national contexts. In this case, the inter-national dimension was brought up by the nature of technology (i.e. the search engines): "there's been a time during my research when I was not looking for international perspectives but when I do a quick Google ... then I'll be like 'Oh ... this exists' and sometimes I'll happen into things that I wouldn't happen onto otherwise just because of the structure of that search". Thus, although content remained understood as produced within specific national contexts, the internet was a place of many such contexts.
2l3Although participants felt this did not apply to Canada, many were aware of the possibility of censorship on the internet, particularly in connection to China's policy or Australia's firewall. Although related to the infrastructure of the internet and the construction of national boundaries on the internet, these examples were not provided in response to the question discussed here. 293
This view of internet content as national enclaves in an inter-national space was however challenged by Re, who equated content with information. Information, she argued, was not reducible to national spaces: thus, Re talked about Wikipedia as a place where information was "not [ ] part of any identity, really, because there are people from all over the world contributing to that reference or whatnot So it makes me feel maybe more international than belonging to a particular country"21*. In this case, although contributors to Wikipedia were seen as rooted in national contexts, the mere fact that everyone could contribute to this alleged repository of information was enough for it to be imagined as an 'international' space. However, statistically speaking, the vast majority of Wikipedia webpages in English are edited from users in the United States, followed by some European countries, Canada and India (Lieberman and Lin, 2009).
Thus, it is important to question what 'international' means in this case and who gets to be a part of it.
Importantly, not everyone bought into the view of information-as-factual. For
Toronto Student, information was always embedded within a cultural context. This embeddedness did not mean that such cultural content cannot be understood, but merely that it necessarily involved an evaluation in terms of its applicability to a different national context: thus, information-as-culture required a "tricky mental work to try and say okay, this is something interesting from a different place, and it's unclear how much it applies here"
2l4As a sjde note, it is interesting to observe that for another respondent, it was precisely Wikipedia that signalled national frames However, it was not the content per se, but rather the inability to obtain a tax deduction for his donation to Wikipedia which made TorontoStudent annoyed "what does Canada have to do to get like a Wikipedia branch We are heavily, you know, internet connected kind of a country and yet, you know, we don't have this" 294
The same tension appeared in the respondents' discussion of online interaction: for some, interaction was international and inclusive; while nationality was there, it did not seem to get into the way of socialization across national borders. Thus, Sockmonkery brought up the example of a hobby-based forum. Although members had to choose a country in their profiles, the board is "very inclusive. There's people from like Finland and Cuba that are participating as well. They're all over the world but the majority of the readership and the majority of the people who participate and comment are American".
For Gene however, nationality was hampering socialization. Describing the case of participation in online technical forums, Gene argued that Americans could be easily identified because they were generally rude. While the internet was a global space in the sense that everyone could be online, the nation remained understood as an important characteristic influencing interaction.
All of these answers can be interpreted as performances of identity - professional, age and class identities, as well as cosmopolitan identities. This is perhaps not surprising given the specific demographic surveyed here. What is perhaps more interesting is the constant negotiation between different discourses - nationalism, neo-liberalism, technological determinism - that the respondents used in articulating images of the internet that spoke of the worldviews and identity performances that these respondents tried to put forth. Thus, the respondents constructed the internet as a space where the nation was shaping the content, the social use as well as the infrastructure of this technology. Furthermore, the pairs nation/ international and information/ culture often appeared as the principles of classification according to which the internet could be spoken of. 295
8.2.3 Relations of agency: the internet impacts the nation
The last interview question discussed here proposed a conceptual relation of agency. The researcher introduced the question with a brief discussion of Canada's regulatory efforts around radio and television, understood in the policy sphere as nation-building tools.
Thus, several of my interviewees responded to the question by comparing the internet with previous media; in such cases, they argued that the internet was different, and thus perhaps not as useful as radio and television in building the nation.
It was interesting to observe that in several cases, television was constructed as both a homogeneous media (in terms of transmitting the same national values, under the
Cancon framework) and a homogenizing media (in terms of creating uniform experiences for Canadians)215. The nation-building impact of television was often accepted without any further discussion, at least in the context of talking about the internet. For instance,
Dyer explained that when consuming radio and television, she was more aware of consuming Canadian content; by contrast, her internet consumption appeared to her as privileging American sites, and thus perhaps not helping her national identity. Deb added that where the internet allowed people to find whatever they were interested in,
"television sort of comes in"; in this case, she reproduced the technologically deterministic vision of technology as having 'inner' features determining social use.
Thus, the interviewees worked with the proposed relation of agency by providing three major types of articulations: they saw the internet as weakening the nation,
215 The articulation of television as bringing American content into Canada was barely mentioned in this context. However, the threat of American content was a trope often relied upon in talking about online content. 296 primarily because of its alleged 'global' nature; they constructed the internet as strengthening the nation, as a result of its 'innate' ability to connect the members of the nation to each other; and they questioned this relation of agency by proposing instead that the internet is a personal medium.
Table 21: Frequency of the proposed effects of the internet on national identity (all answers paraphrased) i ~~ ~~ _ j Proposed effects of the internet on national identity Frequency No effect - internet as tool I 8 Double-edge sword: opening for globalization, but also for reinscription of national borders | 7 Internet brings globalization (or American content), weakens national identity | 7 Internet strengthens the nation I 6 Internet is a personal medium, weakening/ strengthening dependent on choice 6
Identity is transformative, the internet is just one element of this transformation t 2
The internet affects the nation: Responses falling into this category portrayed the internet as a factor able to weaken or strengthen the nation. A few respondents constructed the internet as a potential to do both.
For John, the internet was going to "definitely globalize" the world, because all major sites and applications were used all over the world, regardless of their national customization: "yeah, I think it will definitely help water down - help - or it will increase the watering down of Canadian national culture". John legitimized this argument by recounting the experience of his parents: they lived in Newfoundland and were culturally and linguistically distinct from each other in spite of being some 50km apart. The arrival of television, as John explained, promoted "Canadian culture so, well, destroyed
Newfoundland culture". In this articulation, national identity appeared as displacing local identities; in the same way, the 'global' seemed to displace the 'national'. Importantly, the
'global' dimension of the internet seemed to be brought along by the availability of 297 technology all over the world; however, this argument remained problematic, since a). the availability of technology everywhere in the world is questionable, and b). it does not take into account the local appropriations of technology in terms of both use and the cultural values through which this technology becomes understood.
Gene also saw the internet as a 'global' technology whose "inevitable consequence" would lead to a weakened national identity. In his view, "as much as we try and fight and stop people seeing what's outside, in much the way the North Koreans limit their internet, sooner or later people are going to start to see this stuff'. The internet appeared as a democratic tool, a way in which information was made available to everyone, thus allegedly allowing people to free themselves from tyrannical societies and join the Western model of a modern world216. Horatio equally thought that being exposed to different viewpoints via the internet transformed the world, making it "a much more homogeneous place". These articulations echoed the view of the technologically-led
'globalization' as a homogenization process; importantly, as Gene's depiction seemed to recommend, this homogenization implied the universal adoption of the Western model of technological progress and democracy. For Ella, this homogenization was primarily one of values, connecting people into a 'global' world, allegedly enabled by technology:
"Maybe even the branding of the world wide web .... It's kind of promoted as this global web which automatically... I think you would kind of envision sort of you know, the world connected by the internet". Interestingly, only one respondent commented on the colonizing aspects of this 'homogenization', arguing that the internet's emphasis on instant
216 It should be noted that such visions always rest on the implied assumption that everyone else who's not like us is oppressed and ignorant. Once ignorance is addressed, people will inevitably replicate 'our model', because 'our model' is the best (the universal). 298 connectivity and mediated communication remained Western values that marginalized non-Western forms of social interaction (particularly those valuing face to face interaction over mediated one).
The internet strengthens the nation: Six interviewees argued that the internet was in fact strengthening the nation. For Emily, the 'global' dimension of the internet only emphasized the national dimension, namely a "recognizable entity on the internet of what is Canada". In this articulation, the 'global' was understood as the 'Other' of the 'Canadian nation': the space of difference outside the boundaries of the nation. This encounter with difference was seen as further intensifying the awareness of the 'nation' as a whole.
For Star, the internet also allowed members of the nation to 'find' each other and to consume 'national culture'. Interestingly, Star was the only one who compared the internet with television; however, in her view, television had lost its mandate to promote
Canadian content. The internet was not filling in the gap left open by television: "it's easier to find Canadian content on the internet than it is on television [...] I think the internet would be a positive thing in creating a sense of Canadian identity compared to television". Star's story seemed to contradict the view discussed above where television was imagined as a nation-building tool. Yet, this was not necessarily a logical contradiction, but a matter of selecting and articulating elements according to one's communicative purpose: both television and the internet can be understood as mediating
Canadian, as well as international (and not only American) content. The choice of seeing these media as 'nation-building' or 'global' often relies on an ideological selection: are we 299 concerned with the 'influx' of the 'foreign' into the nation; or are we more concerned with the parochial tendencies that reject exposure to 'other cultures'?
For Star, Colleen and SuzyS, the internet made the nation more accessible to people, particularly in the context of Canada's diversity. Thus, Colleen explained that
Canadian identity had always been transformative; through the internet, newcomers to
Canada can integrate into the nation and thus contribute to this transformation: "people from other nationalities who come here, because they can find information in their own languages. And in that sense, I guess it's sort of like a more integrated society". Colleen pointed out that although having people read about Canada in their own languages might also keep people apart, in the end what brought them together was the consumption of the same information. Thus, "we can all integrate". However, Colleen preserved some ambivalence on this, because, by the same token, she also had to accept that the internet also allowed immigrants to keep in touch with their original countries: "They can just go online and find that out and not really - at least form the internet sense they can keep identifying. With that, I'm like -1 don't know". In this articulation, the internet was understood as strengthening the nation; Colleen concluded that exposure to information led to national homogenization (integration). The reverse of this was that exposure to non-national information remained a threat to the nation.
Sally and Nina reproduced a similar idea, without making direct reference to ethnocultural diversity and immigration. Nina explained that "more than anything, [the internet] makes it easier to know the nation as a whole". This may not necessary affect one's identification, but it did make national aspects more accessible. Sally continued this idea by adding that the nation can also engage in dialogue online: "if anything, the 300
internet promotes more national discussion because you've got people from all over the
country having the opportunity and the chance to have that discussion when they never
would have before". Here, the internet was understood as a space where the nation came
together and discussed its shared values and perspectives: "I think it's really important for an identity, precisely because in Canada, where our identity is just a constant debate.
We're suffering all the time from the lack of knowing what our national identity is". She
further added that the discussion itself constituted the essence of the Canadian nation. As
argued above, in such articulations, it is ultimately the belief in the nation as an objective
reality that organizes our understanding of the social role of the internet.
The double-edge sword effect of the internet: For some respondents, the relation of
agency was dependent on the individual use of the internet. Samantha explained that the
internet was like a double-edge sword; it could open the international dialogue, but it
could also reinscribe a parochial understanding of nationhood. In the end, it came down
to "who's using [the internet] and in what ways. I mean, the potential is there, there is
potential to kind of discover and learn about all these other areas of the world, but at the
same time, it seems the potential is also there to kind of reinscribe and close down those
doors, those divisions". Agency was an important aspect for Samantha, and throughout
the interview, she had often engaged reflexively with her own position on the nation, a
position she interpreted through the prism of individual agency. In her articulation, the
internet was not bringing an inevitable change to the social world; social transformation
came through the people using technology. 301
Other respondents, such as James,Yvette, Shannon, Kathleen and TorontoStudent, also emphasized the idea of choice: users select the content they consume on the internet according to their own perspective. Thus, the internet could be seen as both weakening and strengthening the nation, but technology itself was not the cause of this transformation. As Yvette explained, the internet was a technology characterized by a diversity of content. In this case, a feature of this technology favoured individual manipulation over a homogeneous reception of content. A priori values and ideological positions were seen as affecting one's internet use.
Not all respondents accepted this conceptual relation; just as in the case of the previous two conceptual relations, they justified their position by constructing the two concepts
('nation' and 'internet') as independent from each other. Thus, Alyse and Diane positioned
'technology' and 'national identity' as belonging to different referential spheres; national identity was seen as referring to one's inner nature, while the 'internet' was merely a tool one used; as such a conceptual relation between them could not be envisaged. For Julie and Joe, the nation was transformative in the first place; in this case, the internet was only one of the many changes to which the nation had to adapt.
To summarize, respondents engaged with the proposed relation of agency in ways that resonated with the articulations in the policy reports and the newspaper articles.
Thus, some interviewees accepted the question and proceeded by explaining why and how the internet may weaken, strengthen or have double-edge effects on the nation. In such cases, the internet appeared as an universally available carrier of information, as a mirror for the nation or as a tool to be used according to one's identification. For those 302 who problematized the relation of agency, the source of tension seemed to stem from considering the internet and the nation as referring to different types of entities that were not compatible with each other.
8.3 Summary
This chapter has reviewed the articulations through which the interview respondents have described the internet in relation to their national identity. When prompted to think about the nation as a category of classification, the interviewees were generally able and willing to do so. In this process, they both re-produced the discourse of Canadian nationalism and re-negotiated it. Most importantly, they also drew from a technologically deterministic view of the nature and role of technology in modern society, as well as from the popularization of the internet as a space of endless possibilities, freedom and agency.
Thus, in these everyday conversations, the internet became an object of discourse with the help of several discourses. When discussing the 'internet-in-general', respondents mainly drew from a technological determinism and the popularization discourses on the internet discussed in Chapter 1. In such cases, the emphasis was on freedom, possibility, and individual choice. As one respondent put it, the internet appears as a 'wild west': a huge, untamed space of global freedom and possibility. It is by reference to these discourses that we come to understand the internet as a 'global village' or as a space of agency that is, in many ways, distinct from the geo-political organization of modern world. Furthermore, this image of the internet as a space of possibility cannot be divorced from a neo-liberal view of choice and individual responsibility as the central pillars of a just society. 303
However, in thinking about the internet in terms of their own use, respondents constructed a different picture of what this medium means to them: a social space where national frames remained important, even though most of the times they were unconscious or implied (rather than explicitly recognized). It is here that nationalism was most relevant. As a category of classification, the nation helped identify and interpret content or interactions online. On other occasions, the infrastructure of the internet itself seemed to signal a national form of organization. Thus, making sense of this new technology rested upon the available discourses about that particular technology, but also about the social world.
From a micro perspective, this understanding was primarily a process of negotiating an articulation of this technology in relation to our identities. Almost all of the respondents insisted on presenting themselves as agents, negotiating the material and symbolic contexts of their own internet use against particular discourses - nationalism, globalization, technological determinism, neo-liberal individualism. Of interest here is the enduring willingness to rely upon nationalism to make sense of one's own identity in relation to the social world (also Skey, 2007). In other words, the power of ideology stems from our willingness to see and believe certain things: that individuals are free and autonomous, yet social beings; that social co-existence of these individuals is more than the sum of its parts; and that nations designate real social groups.
Importantly, although creative agents, individuals worked within the conceptual space and with the symbolic resources provided by pre-existing discourses. As discussed in Chapter 3, this diversity is often an unintended consequence of diversity of interpellations with which an individual is confronted (e.g. as a Canadian, as a history 304 student, as a father etc.). From a micro perspective, the interesting question that emerges is that of the persistence of these discourses, in spite of the diversity of articulations that they enable. If, as John Thompson argued, "it seems more likely that our societies, in so far as they are 'stable' social orders, are stabilized by virtue of the diversity of values and beliefs and the proliferation of divisions between individuals and groups" (1984, p. 5), then where does this leave the question of both discourses and social structures? 305
Chapter 9: Discussion
The analysis described in the previous chapters maps the conceptual relations through which the internet was turned into an object of discourse in the sphere of policy and news media. Nationalism provided not only the source of legitimacy for proposing particular configurations of the internet, but also the discursive resources through which a new technology was made meaningful as a resource or a place of the nation. From this perspective, nationalism helped institutional actors deal with a complex situation, making the 'unknown' (a new technology) relevant to their audiences by situating it within the familiar, yet elusive, context of the nation. In the context of everyday life, the images of the internet that the respondents articulated also drew from existing discursive resources; these articulations reflected not only the worldviews that individuals espoused, but also constituted contextual identity performances. Importantly, nationalism remained a discourse from which respondents were both willing and able to draw in speaking about the new technology, even though the respondents did not necessarily saw the internet as a nation-building tool. These micro articulations of the internet are thus better understood as a site where individuals negotiate their own views of the world by responding to and transforming a variety of ideological interpellations217.
In this chapter, I will engage with some of the theoretical and methodological implications of these findings. A major thread running across these spheres was that of social transformation. The idea of change was presented as an inevitable force, allegedly 217 In other words, in these micro articulations we can recognize that individuals are indeed the Foucaultian 'nodes' of power, as such, their are simultaneously interpellated from a variety of discourses Importantly however, if on the macro level, the relation between these discourses and particular distributions of power can be more easily identified, on the micro level, these discourses appear as more general and can only be discussed in terms of a general outlook on the social world 306 brought along by techno-economic processes from outside of the nation (i.e. a chaotic and conflictual global space formed by economic dynamics) and thus pressuring the nation to adapt. In the first section of this chapter I will consider whether this rhetoric of change truly represents a sign of social transformation. In the second part, I will move to a discussion of the communicative flow across the three analyzed social spheres. The core question in this case is: how we can think of the circulation of the articulations around the internet from the macro level to everyday meaning-making processes? In the last section, I will go return to the concept of 'discourse' and discuss its use throughout this thesis, advancing a few theoretical and methodological reflections on its usefulness and limitations.
9.1 The question of social change
This thesis began with the question of whether the internet will eventually be constructed as a nation-building tool. This query however was formulated against a particular rhetoric
(described in Chapter 1), which constructed the 'internet' as an enabler, as well as a symptom of social transformation. Are we indeed moving away from a world where nations, national borders and nationalisms are becoming increasingly irrelevant? Is the internet a symptom of a 'changing' world? Can we find evidence of this alleged transformation on the discursive level, namely in the articulations through which the internet is constructed as an object of discourse in the various social spheres? And what does the Utopian, 'global village' narrative through which the internet seems to be understood signify in this context? 307
This question of social transformation and the discursive tensions around it are best captured in James Carey's (1998) prediction that the internet will displace the
"national communication system" which has been put in place in the United States from the 19th century on. Although the internet per se was not the cause of social transformation, Carey saw it as an aspect of it. In his view, the internet is part of the "new media ecology" which was no longer confined to and defined by national borders, but connected to the "new physical ecology", i.e. mobility and forms of social organization that cut across national borders and boundaries. In other words, social transformation was seen as already taking place; the internet was thus merely one of its most visible aspects, subsequently becoming understood as one of its most visible drivers. Yet, as Carey himself warned, this was merely an "uncertain prediction of an uncertain future".
9.1.1 Change and nationalism in the spheres of policy and media
The analysis chapters revealed that the idea of social change cuts across all policy texts, newspaper reports and everyday conversations. Change was presented to readers of policy reports as a reason why the internet needed to be managed by the nation, i.e. brought into line with national values. The various voices in the sphere of media equally relied on the idea of change to legitimize their proposals for the development of the internet. In both cases, change was seen and depicted from the vantage point of the nation: it was a change that affected the nation, and a change that the nation must manage. This effectively nationalized the internet as both a tool of nation-building and as a means of economic growth for the nation. Yet, in this process, the understanding of the nation also changed, becoming infused with a neo-liberal take on the social world as an 308 economic marketplace, of the state as a facilitator of profit-making activities, and of citizens as skilled labour and users from which profit can be derived.
In this context, nationalism can be understood as a discourse which helps contain and manage a change depicted as external to the nation-state. In the policy and media spheres, the discursive level is the dimension where we can analyze the agenda for action in respect to the deployment of the internet within Canada and the values through which this agenda should be interpreted218. Nationalism remains the recommended lens for imagining the internet in terms of its roles, functions and characteristics. Yet, nationalism also legitimizes an economic take to the internet and thus opens the way for the negotiation of the distribution of power and of resources; importantly however, this negotiation is one between major industry actors and the government, while everyone else (e.g. smaller businesses, citizens etc.) seemed excluded from this process. By espousing a nationalist agenda and rhetoric, the industry actors are also constrained in their options and pressured to rally their business interests to the ambiguous 'national interest'. The beauty of'national interest' is that nobody can pinpoint exactly what that is; this gives the various actors interested in the development of the internet a flexible vocabulary through which to present their particular agenda as best serving the nation219.
218 The normative impetus however is not the same as saying that this is how the agenda is indeed interpreted. 2l9In his discussion of the state and the capitalist order, political scientist Bob Jessop (1990) has proposed that the state is an entity that always has to self-reproduce itself. A state is never an accomplished project, but always a process. The modern state, argues Jessop, is a capitalist state in which the different interests of capital compete against each other; to reproduce itself, the state needs to create an "unstable equilibrium of compromise" (p. 161). As Jessop further explains, this involves the "mobilization of support behind a concrete, national-popular programme of action which asserts a general interest in the pursuit of objectives that explicitly or implicitly advance the long-term interests of the hegemonic class (fraction), and which privileges particular 'economic-corporate' interests compatible with this programme" (p. 161). 309
From a historical perspective, this picture is not at all new. Nationalism has been a powerful discourse of legitimacy in the public arena. The interesting point, in relation to the question of social change, is the continuing endurance of nationalism as a powerful discourse for claiming legitimacy and mobilizing audiences around particular roles and agendas. In other words, nationalism seems to retain its interpellative power.
Furthermore, regardless of whether these proposals are accepted or not, this reliance sets the agenda for further discussion - subsequent debates may question the specific plans for action, but retain the national framing of the internet as an object of discourse.
In this analysis, 'globalization' discourses appear as complementary to nationalism; furthermore, they appear to facilitate the (temporary) coupling of nationalism and neo-liberalism. Thus, the 'global' is often presented as an economic market, outside of the boundaries of the nation-state, and where the latter has to compete against other states. This competition seems understood along the lines of a form of social Darwinism: adapt to the 'global' marketplace, or risk being left behind.
9.1.2 Change and nationalism in everyday meaning-making
The idea of the 'global' dimension also permeated the way respondents imagined the internet. In that context however, it is not necessarily understood as an economic process, but as a rather blurred picture of an inter-connected social world, brought about by an allegedly universal technology. For some of the respondents, the internet was both a technology shrinking the world and a consequence of this process. Yet, these images of the technologically mediated world do not necessarily undermine the worldview nationalism proposes, nor do they make this discourse irrelevant in constructing the 310 internet as an object of discourse. The 'global world' remains the context outside the boundaries of the nation-state; as a technological dimension, the 'global internet' remains understood as an universally available technology bringing together members of various nations. The respondents in the interview sample often assumed that this global dimension of the contemporary world breaks away with the past, seen as a world where information and communication could not circulate freely. In this context, the internet appeared to them as making content and social interactions available across national borders and boundaries220.
The rhetoric around the concepts of 'information' and 'communication' is of particular interest here. Popular culture images of the internet as strings of zero's and one's (the image made iconic by the trilogy The Matrix), as well as recent visualizations of the internet as colourful, interconnected networks are telling in this context: by comparing those images to that of the geo-political map of the world, with its national divisions, we can see how, within these new modes of graphic representation, the internet may appear to be a different space, where national borders are no longer applicable. This rhetoric of 'information' as a message that the internet allegedly makes available in every corner of the world draws from the legacy of cybernetics and information theory (see
Chapter 2) constructing social inequalities, unrest or conflicts as a failure in communication. The alleged universal availability of information and social connection that the internet seems to bring along thus becomes a solution to a social order where
220 Does this mean that the world is different7 What are the implications of this alleged shrinkage of distance and of the accessibility of cultural content7 As discussed in chapter 9, several respondents hinted at the argument that the availability of and access to information will replace racism or intolerance At the heart of this argument lies the idea that illiberal attitudes are in fact mis-understandings between people However, this argument completely ignores the power dimension of social relations 311 inequality remains pervasive. The economic dimension of this inequality becomes however obscured.
The emphasis on information also erases the politics at the core of nationalism; importantly, such politics stem from the ontological separation, operated through the category of the 'nation', between 'us' (the nation) and the 'Other'. This difference is not only formative of the nation, but also threatening to it. In the information paradigm, difference is understood as a mis-communication problem - or a problem caused by lack of access to proper information: something is 'different' only to the extent that is not fully known; once the missing information is made available, the difference can be understood and our attitude to difference re-adjusted. Thus, it becomes possible to think that difference (whether ethnic, racial, gender, class etc.) will no longer be problematic once everyone has full access to all the relevant information.
Another narrative that respondents invoked in describing their understanding of the internet was that of personal agency. Whether they talked about the availability of choice or about the power to control what one consumes online, people appeared more interested in putting forward an image of the internet as a medium of agency. These conversations were occasionally marked by a tension between thinking of the internet as a medium of personal choice and the realization that corporate actors are increasingly controlling the internet, often by reproducing national borders online. Imagining the internet in terms of the ability to choose specific content seems to leave little room for the internet as a tool of nation-building or for nationalism as a discourse relevant in the process of understanding this technology. 312
Yet, as previously argued, these narratives only seem to displace nationalism.
Interview respondents were both able and willing to rely on nationalism to make sense of the internet in terms of infrastructure, content and use. However, it is equally true that nationalism was not explicitly informing the respondents descriptions of the internet (as can be seen in Table 16). From this perspective, the interviews seem to point to a lag or gap between the discursive drawing of national boundaries around the understanding of the internet in the spheres of policy and media, and the mundane conceptualization of this medium. By contrast, in most cases, the understanding of television as an instrument of nation-building seems to be consistent across these social spheres.
How can this gap be explained? Three possible explanations can be advanced at this point. The first explanation rests on the time lag in the circulation of articulations between macro and micro levels. The incorporation of 'official' discourses into mundane understandings is a long-term process that also draws from socialization in other social spheres (such as education or popular culture)221. Certain themes or images cut across the three analyzed spheres; overall however, there is more discursive overlap between the policy and the media sphere, while everyday understandings of the internet remain more diverse. One possible explanation may be that between these two spheres and everyday understanding stand other contexts within which the internet is being presented through particular articulations. Intuitively, the educational system may be a crucial 'translation' mechanism through which policy concerns may be made known - or, more importantly, enacted through curriculum choices and classroom materials. Similarly, the grasp over
221 The way in which the sector-specific discourses around the internet come to be assimilated in everyday life - and most importantly, the ways in which these discourses may feed from each other - have not been specifically explored here 313 our imagination of popular culture images of the internet, as the one mentioned above, is hard to assess. All of these processes of translation between different social spheres necessarily requires time for certain articulations to become part of 'common sense' interpretations of technology.
The second possible interpretation relies on invoking the unconscious dimension of nationalism (Billig, 1995). As the interviews show, nationalism is often present in an implicit way in our understanding of the world. Nationalism remains familiar to respondents and is often relied upon, in an automatic manner, as a shortcut to providing explanations that are assumed as mutually comprehensible to everyone in the communicative act. In this case, the relative invisibility of nationalism from making sense of the internet in everyday life can be seen as a banalization of this discourse, in the sense that Billig recommended: the nation has become an unconscious category of practice that does not elicit critical reflection. This interpretation seems to be supported by the fact that while some respondents were reluctant to think of a 'Canadian internet' or of the influence of their national identity upon their internet use, they were equally quick to point to the
'American internet' or the alleged features of 'American' content or internet use.
Last, but not least, the final possible interpretation of this gap rests on conceptualizing the discourse of individual agency as a reaction against the essentializing drive at the core of nationalism. In this context, it is hard to ignore the co-optation of the ideas of individual agency and freedom by neo-liberalism (e.g. Erison et al., 2000;
Harvey, 2007; McDowell, 2004). As discussed in the analysis chapters, neo-liberalism is important in the sphere of policy and media, framing the understanding of the internet as an economic matter. While this economic dimension seems absent from everyday 314 understandings of the internet, it may well be the case that in this social sphere, it is precisely the emphasis on agency and freedom in relation to the internet that corresponds to the neo-liberal economic framing of the internet on the macro level.
9.1.3 Social change and hegemonic discursive adaptation
The endurance of nationalism as a mobilizing and legitimizing discourse cannot be divorced from the historical dimension of its institutions within the nation-state
(bureaucracies, political parties, cultural and corporate actors, educational systems etc.).
The constraints that these institutions place on individuals are not an act of imposition or of external control, but have become, in time, the context within which our understanding of the self and of the world comes into shape. However, both discursive articulations and institutions change. The internet is not the first medium in Canada to become an object of discourse in relation to nationalism. Chapter 5 has reviewed the similar cases of radio and television; other media such as telephony or satellite broadcasting have undergone the same process of being made known and stabilized in terms of their social roles and functions in the public sphere in relation to the Canadian nation. It may well be the case that nationalism served primarily rhetorical functions (e.g. MacDougall, 2007) and that in fact, financial interests drove the particular institutionalizations of media. But the case remains that nationalism seems to have always appeared - at least retroactively - as the dominant discourse framing this problematic. In this context, I have already mentioned how my interviewees had no hesitation in imagining television as a nation-building medium222.
222 This does not mean that there are no more debates over television and its role in society; rather, the point here is that in contrast to the internet, we can see how a dominant discourse about television as a nation- 315
Yet, while the use of nationalism remained a continuity, there were also differences, particularly in the discourse of nationalism itself. For instance, in the case of the railway, the focus of policy discourse was on national unity; in the case of broadcasting, it began with national unity, but subsequently shifted to national culture.
With the internet, the focus seems to be on national economy and international economic competitiveness for Canada. The historical context thus reveals both continuity and transformation in the social construction of a medium as an object of discourse.
Furthermore, the temporal distance and the agenda of the researcher are also crucial in observing social continuity and/or transformation.
Where does this leave the possibility of social change and the possibility of investigating it via discourses? Chapter 3 introduced Hall's model of hegemony, which proposes that domination is being perpetuated not only by imposition or coercion, but also by co-optation, through the incorporation of subaltern interests into the agenda of the dominant group. This model recommends that dominant discourses (which reflect the interests of the dominant groups) will remain dominant to the extent that they are able to incorporate the ideas of the 'oppressed' without upsetting the overall balance of power.
Importantly, Gramsci conceptualized hegemony primarily within the context of the nation-state: it was the process through which the dominant class within the nation-state brought the interests of other classes in line with its own interest, reframing the latter as the 'national interest' (Bocock, 1986, p. 35). In this context, nationalism was precisely the means through which the bourgeoisie ensured the consent of the workers. Nationalism reincorporated and 'tamed' class interests into a class-less 'national interest'. As shown in building medium has become known and familiar to the respondents who participated in this research. 316 the data analysis chapter, the trope of'national/Canadian interest' remains a major mechanism of investing meaning into the idea of the 'internet' in policy, as well as in media texts. With the hegemony framework in mind, the relevant questions to be asked here are: what is the relation between individuals and the articulations proposed by the policy and media discourses; and, to what extent individual meaning-making processes have an impact or feed back into these macro articulations, as well as on the social forces that make use of them?
I am proposing that nationalism can be understood as such a dominant discourse in the process of the social negotiation of the meaning and function of the internet. The analysis chapters show that this discursive dominance is however not a discursive unity: the relation between discourse and the specific social sphere within which it is formulated and used is an important source of discursive heterogeneity. What makes a discourse dominant in this case is not the circulation of the same definitions, values, narratives etc. but the possibility that all of these elements can be sewn together into a coherent argument. For instance, the media debates over what represents the 'Canadian nation' and how the internet can best be 'Canadianized' can co-exist with images of the 'global village' to the extent that the two images are articulated into a coherent explanation of the
'global' as the environment of'nation-states'. Similarly, the various debates over the internet evidenced in the interviews bring together images of the internet as a nation- building, personal and global(izing) medium. To the extent that the global becomes a context of a national, the national level is itself re-established as the 'basic unit' of social world. 317
The model of hegemony recommends that the relation between the two discourses under investigation here (nationalism and globalization) should be looked at in terms of mutual accommodation. In other words, instead of a priori assuming that these discourses are disjunctive, the focus here is on the specific articulations through which they are invoked, on the relation between these articulations and particular power-related interests, and on the processes of mutual adjustment between them. The analysis undertook here also points to the interplay between these discourses and to their role in authorizing speakers in the policy and media spheres. Within each of them, nationalism was used to communicate about issues of relevance; what the coupling of nationalism and neo-liberal globalization discourses point to is that the principle that informs the selection of
'relevance' remains an essentially capitalist take on social relations. The idea of social change that seems to infuse all three social spheres discussed here is in itself an economic change, which legitimizes the distribution of resources and of power along the lines of ownership of the means of production. Thus, the construction of the internet as an object of discourse in the context of the data analyzed here does not provide much evidence of a real epistemological break223. Instead, the results can be interpreted as a gradual adaptation of both nationalism and of the internet as an object of discourse to the specificity of each social sphere.
The significance of the discursive level in relation to hegemonic adaptation does not stem from the alleged power of a discourse to produce social effects. Rather, a
223 French philosopher Michel Pecheux argued that an epistemological break occurs when pre-existing ideologies are explicitly dismissed and a new discourse emerges as autonomous (Helsloot & Hak, 2008). In the case of this thesis, while neoliberalism, agency and technological determinism seem to be equally important in the social imagination of the internet, their elements are made compatible with nationalism. This process is not, I would argue, an epistemological break with the practice of conceptualizing mass media as nation-building tools. 318 discursive approach reveals that the reproduction of discourses and of the power- structures they legitimate involves a complex - and sometimes contingent - interweaving of meaning involving official, institutional discourses, as well as individual meaning- making processes. The values, ideas and narratives that become dominant across all social spheres are not an exact match: while they may vary, as in the case presented here, what matters is that they can be meaningfully articulated together.
9.2 Communication and meaning across social spheres
As previously described, the choice of three social spheres for analysis - policy, media and everyday life - was not random. It is through policy that our lives are organized and our institutions are steered in particular directions. These decisions, as well as the values behind them, are proposed, dissected, re-framed and ultimately negotiated in the media.
By contrast, the interviews, although representing a small and specific sample, have been included as a glimpse into the how individuals make sense of the internet in everyday interactions. On this micro level, we often see a diversity of opinions, making it particularly interesting to question how discourses appear in everyday life and to what consequences (Thompson, 1984, p. 36).
But what does this relation between us, as speakers, and discourses consist of?
When looking at each of the three spheres, we can see that nationalism and globalization are used strategically for specific communicative purposes. For instance, in the context of policy reports, nationalism remained the primary mechanism for constructing legitimacy.
This function cannot be understood except in relation to the aims and values of policy making within the context of modern society: policy remains an instrument of state 319 control and, most importantly, of a state justified on the basis of its association with a particular nation (however unclear the definition of that 'nation' may be) (also Jessop,
1990). It is, thus, less surprising that, in the context of this sphere, discourses relevant to the organization and the daily functioning of the polis (whether referring to its economic, political or cultural life) are negotiated.
In the context of policy reports, the diversity of opinions that characterizes everyday life is unified into one course of action, which inevitably reflects a particular agenda and a particular set of values. The legitimating function of nationalism is directly connected to the specific drive to generalize and reduce a variety of opinions/ interests to a specific policy, but also to preserve and mobilize public support for it. In the reports analyzed here, nationalism and a neo-liberal approach to the nation as an economic resource in a 'global market' mutually shape each other; yet, this neo-liberal vision is also tamed in this process and put under the over-arching goal of national values (however elusive those may be).
Thus, nationalism does not provide a specific 'meaning' (as in 'content') for the internet, but a context which recommends that the internet is important and meaningful only in relation to the nation as a whole. The role of nationalism in making the internet an object of discourse appears to be that of setting the boundaries of a 'specific' internet which is to be understood and managed, out of a general category entitled 'internet'. In other words, establishing a conceptual relation between the 'nation' and the 'internet' creates a grid of classification through which specific cases are to be delineated, recognized and placed in a relationship to each other - and to the general concept. To return to Foucault's own discussion of how we make sense of things (1970, p. xvii), 320 nationalism can be understood here as the taxonomy that helps put order into the world of technological objects, by placing them in relation to the existing social structures and their associated moral universes. Importantly, while nationalism provides the taxonomy, the specific articulations based on that taxonomy are related to the social function of the sphere (policy, media) within which communication takes place. In this sense, nationalism can be seen as a enabling the translation of sphere-specific concerns from one context to another.
Globalization discourses are also present in the policy reports. Through them, the conditions external to the state are made sense of; this realm of 'externality' is thus re introduced into the communicative act taking place within the policy sphere. In other words, within the context of the policy reports, discourses of globalizations are a complementary explanation to that provided by the discourse of nationalism: nations exist in a global world of nations, which influence and constrain each other, but are also in a competition for economic leadership. Thus, nationalism and globalization discourses are not mutually exclusive, but the worldviews they put forward remain compatible in this analysis.
We can observe similar dynamics in the context of the newspaper coverage of policy documents. The role of wider discourses in making the internet an object of discourse is again related to the specificity of news media as a social sphere. For, following Habermas' discussion, the media remain the space (however colonized by economic concerns and structures) where matters of relevance to the polis are being discussed, analyzed and negotiated in an allegedly224 rational and public manner
224 One of the major critiques that Habermas brings to modern media is precisely that they do not allow people to participate in the public deliberation. Instead, this mediatic space of deliberation is controlled by 321
(Habermas, 2006). This analysis shows that, in the news media, nationalism remained both an explicit mechanism of legitimation and an implicit background against which the internet was understood in terms of its potential social consequences and functions.
Regardless of the specific articulations and regardless of the agendas that nationalism was asked to represent, speakers relied upon this discourse to connect to their audience, as well as to mobilize their support.
The media coverage of policy reports also indicates that the internet has been formulated as an object of discourse in relation to the Canadian nation prior to the dynamics in the policy sphere. Thus, it is not the case that this conceptualization of the internet originates at the level of state institutions: rather, industry actors themselves articulated the conceptual relations between the internet and the Canadian nation in order to put the internet on the public agenda and justify their request for (access to) resources.
Yet, the industry was not the originator of this articulation; as a new technology, the internet had to be made sense of in relation to the existing legacy of thinking about communication media in Canada. This is precisely why the previous section has proposed that 'technological newness' in this case has to be understood in relation to the existing structures, in a process of hegemonic adaptation of the 'new' to the status quo which, in turn, alters the status quo itself, opening the door to (social) transformation.
Yet, if in the sphere of policy nationalism helped deal with the problem of reducing the diversity of opinions to a course of action, in the sphere of media, nationalism seemed to foster this diversity of opinions in negotiating the course of action proposed through the policy reports. In this case too, the role of discourses in making the experts but also lobbyists, advocates, public relations persons etc. (see Habermas, 2006). 322 internet an object of discourse was related to the purpose and practices of media as a social sphere: that of debating public matters. As already argued, discourses do not provide a specific articulation of meaning for the concept of the 'internet': they provide a means of talking about it, by situating it within a system of classification that allows further negotiations on the roles, structure and values associated with the internet.
Of course, the discourse of nationalism and that of globalization are also adapted in this process; this adaptation consists of a change in the contents of the specific articulations. It is not an epistemological break with these discourses. Thus, both the
'nation' and the 'global' are articulated in an economic manner, as loci of accumulation, profit and competition; for instance, the 'Canadian nation' is discussed in the policy documents in terms of technological creativity, economic ability and techno-economic leadership. Importantly, these 'national' techno-economic features co-exist with the cultural ones (values, language, history etc.).
In terms of the communicative flow across the spheres of policy and media, this analysis points to a direct exchange between the two spheres; thus, specific articulations and proposed courses of action circulate from media to policy, and from policy to media.
However, this circulation is also contingent on the actors willing to take specific topics/ articulations into discussion; pinpointing which topics and which articulations will be carried on from one sphere to the other is impossible to assess simply by analyzing public discourse. What can be said however is that the degree of overlap between these two spheres seems, in this context, significant; this overlap can be best understood as a process of translating the meaning of the 'internet' from one sphere to the other. Here, 323 translation stands for the adaptation of the object of discourse to the purpose, interest and vocabulary of the specific social sphere.
On the micro level, the relation between speakers and discourses poses different problems. For once, on this level we are dealing with person-to-person communicative settings, where the content as well as the social role of communication are equally influencing the meaning-making process. The question of participants' agendas, values and beliefs is complex enough, as participants themselves are not transparent225.
Furthermore, in the particular communicative encounter, participants are also negotiating power relations with each others, but also with society at large. In this respect, everyday constructions of the internet are also attempts to manage these micro networks of power relations. The reliance on nationalism or globalization discourses to make sense of the internet has a performative aspect: by invoking or negotiating such discourses, individuals position themselves within these micro networks of power relations. Just as in the case of policy or media, nationalism and globalization discourses serve particular legitimating functions in the construction of identity and in the positioning of the self in relation to others. Furthermore, the importance of these discourses in constructing the internet as an object of discourse cannot however be divorced from the context of living within a nation-state and being exposed to an increasing reliance on 'globalization' discourse to legitimize policy actions (e.g. Hay and Rosamond, 2002; Rosamond 1999).
Where does this leave the research question of this project? By setting symbolic boundaries around the concept of the internet, nationalism allows for this concept to be
225For the most part, our agendas, values and beliefs cannot be accessed by the researcher (and occasionally remain muddled even to the acting subject) and are not always logical or stable. Although they can often be inferred or implied, the question of the 'correctness' of this indirect observation remains open. 324 spoken about in relation to the specific purposes and functions of each social sphere: within the sphere of policy, the internet is understood as something to be managed by the state; within the sphere of media, the internet is understood as a resource whose management must be debated in the public sphere; and, on the level of everyday life, the internet becomes a locus of negotiating the relation between the individual and the wider society in which she lives. The flow of communication between the three social spheres discussed here is neither simple, nor linear; however, what this analysis shows is that the process of nationalizing the internet never appears homogeneous or 'natural' while it is still unfolding.
9.3 Theoretical reflections on the concept of discourse
Theoretically and methodologically, the concept of 'discourse' has been central to the construction of the research project presented here. In this section, I reflect on two aspects of using Foucault's model of discourse: the question of assessing or analyzing power, and my use of the concept of'discourse'.
9.3.1 Assessing power relations
One of the main problems I have encountered in working with a critical discourse analysis methodological framework in conjunction with the Foucaultian-inspired model of discourse was the question of power. In the works of Stuart Hall and John Thompson, power was understood as domination/ oppression. As Thompson remarked, "to study ideology [...] is to study the ways in which meaning (or signification) serves to sustain relations of domination" (1984, p. 4 - my emphasis). Similarly, critical discourse analyst 325
Teun van Dijk argued that although discourses per se are not manipulative, their use by can be, when it results in domination (2006b). But to think of power as domination/ oppression implies a hierarchical relation between specific groups (classes, in traditional
Marxist thought), as well as specific agendas/ interests associated with these groups. My main problem was that of identifying domination in terms of the 'group' and the 'interests' behind the discursive patterns analyzed on the macro and micro level.
Although it appeared quite clearly that industry actors were a major driver of the policy discussions around the internet, the industry itself was not one actor226. Even the
Stentor coalition, one of the major voices covered in the media sphere, might not have been of a single opinion (although it certainly seemed to be, particularly through the extensive coverage of its spokesperson). And while the policy texts appeared as 'one voice' by virtue of being published by the federal government, this is better understood as an analytical move, for a different analysis could focus specifically on the diversity of agendas intersecting within these texts227.
By virtue of the methodological design, I, as the analyst, was interested primarily in nationalism and globalization discourses, selecting them and focusing the analysis upon them. However, in the case of these discourses, it was particularly hard to talk about one group's domination over the other. While I have already argued that nationalism and a neo-liberal discourse of globalization were made compatible with each other within the texts analyzed on the macro sphere, and while it is fair to say that generally, within a
226 As discussed in Chapter 3, hegemony can refer to the dominance of political projects or the dominance of a social structure (Joseph, 2002) Similarly, most of the institutional actors visible in the analysis undertaken on the macro level can be understood as sites of struggle where particular individuals struggle for control over the agenda of those institutions 227 Richard Terdiman's seminal work Discourse, Counter-Discourse (1985) is indicative here Analyzing 19th century French literature, Terdiman shows how a text is a point of intersection - or rather, of struggle for hegemony - between a dominant discourse and a variety of counter-discourses 326 nationally-defined space, such discourses do serve distributions of power relations in the sense of who has the authority to define and to act in particular situations228, it is particularly hard to even point to individual actors as 'dominant'. Part of the problem relates to the concept of collective groups: the closer you try to analyze the composition of a group, the more it appears as provisional. For, as Beverley Skeggs remarked in her own discussion of'class', a group is a constant work of producing its own boundaries and thus of creating itself; as she concluded, the "analysis of class [or of any group - m.n.] should therefore aim to capture the ambiguity produced through struggle and fuzzy boundaries, rather than to fix it in place in order to measure and know it" (2004, p.5).
This also leads us to the other difficulty in assessing domination: if a group is an ongoing process of production, how can we assess the intentionality or the agenda of domination behind it229?
In my opinion, in this case, it is more instructive to think of these discourses as attempting to enrol different users in subject positions that best serve particular distributions of resources: in the case analyzed here, an enrolment of the state as a funder/ manager, of the industry as a developer and as a beneficiary, and of regular citizens as internet-users and skilled workforce. This could further be interpreted as an example of how the transformation of the internet into an object of discourse is another means
228 For example, the analysis of the texts on the macro level show that the industry was portrayed - and accepted as the main legitimate recipient of resources for developing the internet. But again, these resources are not only specific funds; they have more to do with diffused networks of relations between the economic and the political sector. They also have to do with social status and public attention, which may result in shaping the public opinion towards the adoption of that technology, again to the ultimate benefit of industry actors. 229 Thinking of any group as a process of production, a process which involves competing claims, may also imply that these 'agendas' are not necessarily ones 'aimed' at domination, but primarily ones claiming their legitimacy to power. This, on the other hand, does not mean that they may not result in domination. 327 through which a national and a capitalist system is reproduced, by being made meaningful to different actors, in relation to their specific social context.
Power as domination became even more problematic in the context of the interviews; how to assess whether a respondent was 'oppressed' or whether their stories were 'dominating'230? On the micro level, the analyst can adopt an eagle's eye view, and review how the array of particular positions put forward by the respondents are consistent with and contribute to the reproduction of power relations in a given society. In other words, the production of texts on the micro level can be generally compared to the wider roles the discourses in policy and media prescribe for people. But since the prescriptions of discourses are filtered through our subjectivities, this also implies that we incorporate these prescriptions into our own identity and life projects. Thus, we cannot expect that the stories on the micro level 'mirror' discourses; instead, we can analyze to what extent they are congruent or consistent. However, this remains an analytic interpretation, and is very much related to the (political) agenda of the researcher.
In this particular analysis, the articulations put forward by respondents may not necessarily talk about the necessity to adopt technology or to become a skilled member of the workforce (which are the two main roles that the policy texts recommend for citizens). But they do talk about how the internet has been integrated and accepted as a part of their everyday life experience. These articulations are not inconsistent with the roles recommended by the texts on the macro level; furthermore, in these micro
2j0As van Dyk (2006b) notes, domination/ oppression can only be studied at the level of groups and not individuals However, he also states that certain uses of discourses can be 'oppressive' - and there is little doubt that, even in the context of my interviews, the way in which some participants talked about the generalized 'Americans' were oppressive However, this oppression may not (always) be carried on in practice - it can be argued that in the context of my interviews, it remained a discursive and contextual oppression 328 articulations, only few individuals talked about their role, as internet users, in the regulation of the internet. What this may mean is that the regulation and the social negotiation over the meaning of this technology has been left, at least for the time being, in the hands of the state and of the industry. In fact, those respondents who were most interested in regulation were also the ones more concerned about the colonization of the internet by corporations; this concern may again be interpreted as a reaction to an internet understood as an industry-led technology. In other words, this can be viewed as an individual act of reclaiming the 'right to decide' on how the internet should be conceptualized against the perceived commodification of this medium.
Thus, I would argue that the Foucaultian model of power is a more suitable heuristic model for conceptualizing and interpreting discursive patterns than the understanding of power as domination/ oppression. At the core of this model is the idea that power is not only domination, oppression or repression. It is not that domination/ oppression are not real; the Foucaultian model however focuses our attention on how power constitutes the fundamental mechanism of social reproduction. From this perspective, power should be understood as (in)forming all forms of social organization, from family to state: power is "co-extensive with the social body" (Foucault, 1980, p.
142). Because power is inherent in all forms of social relations, ensuring social order, it is also disciplining us. Foucault's model shifts the emphasis from domination (and implicitly from the groups involved in domination processes) to power as a disciplinary mechanism which results in the reproduction of social order2'".
23lAgain, reproduction here should not be seen as implying that things stay the same Going back to the discussion of hegemony in the first section, I am arguing that we can talk about reproduction of the social order, even when the specific details of social organization are changing, to the extent that we are not dealing with a rupture or a major change in the social system 329
From this perspective, the analysis presented here speaks of the discursive mechanisms through which our contemporary social order is reproduced, particularly in the context of the introduction of a new communication medium. Examining the process of negotiating what this technology should do, to what effects and what role should individuals have in this picture, reveals not only of the major discursive concerns and disciplinary mechanisms that are relevant in our society, but also how 'established' or
'contested' these concerns and mechanisms are. In this sense, I have argued in the first section of this chapter that the social negotiation over the meaning and development of the internet as a national economic resource (though not necessarily as a nation-building tool) can be also understood, on a philosophical level, as a process of hegemonic harmonization between neo-liberal globalization discourses and nationalism. The result of this harmonization ensures that the given social order - the national, capitalist state, as well as the allegedly 'global', unregulated marketplace - can be (re)produced. As political scientist Bob Jessop (1990) suggested in his own argument on the reproduction of the state as a national and capitalist autopoietic project, forms of social organization are constantly involved in a process of self-reproduction. The state, in particular, can do this only to the extent that it is able to reconcile the multitude of interests of its members and institutions; it is here that nationalism provides the solution, by enabling the mobilization of these interests "behind a concrete, national-popular programme of action which asserts a general interest in the pursuit of objectives that, explicitly or implicitly, advance the long-term interests of the hegemonic class (fraction), and which privileges particular
'economic-corporate' interests compatible with this programme" (Jessop, 1990, p. 161). 330
9.3.2 The analytical purchase of 'discourse'
Throughout this thesis, 'discourse' has been used in relation to nationalism and globalization, defined as ways of talking about their core concept (nation and global respectively). It has also been used in relation to the internet, understood as a concept referring to a set of technologies whose actual uses, functions and values are both the object and the result of collective processes of negotiation. In this second case, the focus was on how the internet becomes spoken of. The relevant questions here were: what does it mean that something becomes an 'object of discourse'? And, is the use of'discourse' in relation to thinking about the internet any different from its use in relation to nationalism or globalization?
As Julianne Cheek (2004) explained, the concept of 'discourse' has numerous definitions, being used in relation to anything from a form of bounded communication
(e.g. a book) to a worldview. In the context of the French tradition, 'discourse' rests on the distinction between 'langue' (language as structure) and 'parole' (specific forms of speech processes). As discussed in the methodology chapter, the crucial point here is that specific forms of speaking about things are themselves forms of social action: they involve not only speech and thought, but also social action within the context of particular social structures (Gee, 1999, p. 13; also Chilton, 2005, Blommaert & Bulcaen,
2000). Thus, a 'discourse' has to be understood as an analytic category referring to this interaction between "social forms of organization" and "systems of signs" (Hodge &
Kress, 1988, p. 6). Importantly, the crucial assumption at play here is that dominant discourses and existing social structures co-create each other. 331
In The History of Sexuality, Foucault (1978) proposed that a set of social circumstances led to an increasing interest in sexuality, which became increasingly scrutinized especially from a medical perspective. He referred to this process as the transformation of sexuality from practice into discourse; or, in other words, from something practised into something to be examined and classified. In this way, sexuality also became a site of power: a site where different perspectives (medical, religious, hedonistic etc.) struggled to become the 'authority' on what sexuality was, what purposes it should serve, how it should be classified etc. Foucault further argued that through this investment in sexuality as an object of discourse, the latter was 'subjugated' by being inscribed with a certain morality: some sexual practices (heterosexuahty) became morally acceptable, as well as socially useful (reproduction of the social body). This transformed sexuality into a moral and utilitarian activity, policed by medical sciences and planned via policy (Foucault, 1978, p. 37). Furthermore, this process was part of the wider transformation of power in modern contexts: as discussed in the previous section, power was now infusing and supported by all social relations. The transformation of sexuality into an object of discourse was, from this perspective, another mechanism through which modern subjects were enrolled into existing networks of power.
Along these lines, this thesis approached the internet in terms of its transformation into an object of discourse. In this case, 'discourse' stood for the transformation of a set of technologies into something that could be socially meaningful in relation to the existing social order. The internet became an object of discourse outside of technical circles when some industry actors started to believe in its profit-making potential232. Thus, the internet
232 See for instance the argument put forward by Janet Abbate (2001) on the tense relation between the ARPANET circles and the industry, which did not agree to become a part of the internet's precursor until 332 became 'of interest' only when it was constructed from the perspective of an instrumental rationality. The conditions under which this happened were complex, including the historical context, but also socio-economic dynamics within and outside of the Canadian state. However, the important point here, I believe, is to emphasize that contrary to the hype on the internet as the medium of the people and the cradle of freedom and democracy, it was this understanding of it as a source of profit that made the internet a
'public' matter for the government and for the economic actors213.
The concept of'discourse' was also used in this research project in a different way: that is, in relation to 'nationalism' and 'globalization', themselves defined as
'discourses' or ways of speaking about their respective core concepts (i.e. nation, global).
In this case, the use of the concept was more clearly related to 'ideology' or 'worldview'; discourse refers to the symbolic struggle between over people's shared representations of the world. Nationalism or globalization are discourses about social order and about our position, as individuals, within this social landscape; on the other hand, a discourse around the internet is not a discourse about social organization. It may become a site of struggle for hegemony between wider discourses about social life; in this process, the internet is conceptualized in tune with or against the established social order. Wider discourses about social order, such as nationalism or globalization, provide a grid of classification through which the internet is made meaningful by being placed in particular
the latter could be envisaged as a source of profit making 2J3 Again, this does not mean that this is how people may talk or understand the internet on the micro level (as 1 have already argued throughout this chapter) Habermas' distinction between system and hfeworld is indicative here the system is constituted on the basis of a capitalist, instrumental rationality, while the hfeworld consists of interaction/ communicative structures Although system and hfeworld (or macro and micro) may work according to different rationalities, they can only work when there is a harmonious co existence of the two 333 categories. Importantly, I suggest that nationalism and a neo-liberal discourse of globalization were not mutually exclusive, but mutually lending authority to each other.
The conceptual relations through which the internet became understood in relation to the 'Canadian nation' or to the 'global world' can thus be interpreted as providing a way of thinking about technology as being an important aspect of the polis. In this sense, I argue that the 'internet' is being spoken about by the various actors involved in the policy-making process (in policy and media) in a manner that primarily 'nationalizes' this technology; in other words, these discourses serve to create the context within which
'national internet,' but also the 'global internet,' can then be debated and discussed by the relevant stakeholders. This interpretation, I believe, is consistent with the argument of
'technological nationalism' put forward by Maurice Charland and further examined by
Marco Adria, who argued that "technology is at the centre of the modern project of nationalism" (2010, p. 157). As an object of discourse, the internet in Canada became a site where neo-liberal globalization and nationalism reinforce each other, leading to the reproduction of the nation as the principle of social organization in a capitalist structure. 334
Chapter 10: Conclusion
"We live in an era of no historical precedents - this is to say, history is no longer
useful as a tool in helping us understand current changes" (Coupland, 1995, p.
99).
In Douglas Coupland's (1995) fictionalized account of the lives of a group of Microsoft programmers214, the main characters often reflect on how history seems to become irrelevant. The world appears to them as structured by codes, computers and networks; in other words, the world appears to be organized by technologies. The title of the book -
Microserfs - is suggestive: the novel focuses on a journey of self-discovery articulated against an oppressive capitalist system. For, behind the dreams of building a new society through innovation and creativity, the programmers find a worrisome reality: the industry has monopolized not only their work, but also their entire lives.
Although fictional, such accounts point to the cultural narratives through which the internet - and the future that it allegedly brings along - come to be imagined. But, as argued in this thesis, the ways in which we come to imagine and speak of the internet are not a reflection of a changing social structure, where new (and allegedly better) actors come to create a fair and democratic world. Instead, such constructions have to be understood as 'symbols of our age' (Zizek, 1998), indicative of both the problems with which our society is confronted and of the relevant social forces that permeate it.
2j4 Coupland's novel centres on the existential anxieties of a group of Microsoft employees The book's major cultural contribution is that of providing a fictionalized ethnographic account of Microsoft programmers as a sub-culture 335
This thesis argues for the need to recuperate the internet as a discursive formation, focusing on the ways in which various social actors (policy-makers, industry representatives, academics, and individual Canadians) rely on nationalism and globalization discourses to put forward specific images of the internet. This approach helps the researcher focus on a very important set of questions in relation to the study of the internet:
• Who defines what the internet is, what it should do and what it should look like?
• What power dynamics lie behind these definitions?
• Of what values and ideals do these images of the internet speak?
This research project has thus shown that, from a critical perspective, the internet is one of the most interesting loci of social negotiations over power. It cannot be considered as simply a tool whose allegedly 'innate' features announce the dawns of a new era. Instead, the internet is a social construct; the ways in which it becomes an object of discourse in policy reports, in newspaper articles and in everyday life conversations speak of the continuing endurance of social lines of division, of material borders and of symbolic boundaries.
If anything, this research brings to light the heterogeneous yet structured ways in which 'social imaginaries' (Taylor, 2002) come to take shape. It indicates that the relation between macro levels (policy and media) and micro interactions is a complicated one, requiring further attention. In the case of the construction of the internet as an object of discourse in Canada, through policy reports and newspaper stories, as well as in everyday conversations, nationalism and neo-liberal globalization discourses remain crucial mechanisms for constructing legitimacy and for providing a context for meaning-making. 336
Importantly, this speaks of the increasing currency of instrumental rationality; it also speaks of the mutual adjustment between a dominant neo-liberal understanding of the world and Canadian nationalism. Last, but not least, this research shows that the
Foucaultian framework of discourses is able to rescue the critique of ideology, providing communication scholars an useful heuristic for conceptualizing and studying media in relation to power aspects.
10.1 Assessing the findings
This thesis brought forward the work involved in the construction of the internet as an object of discourse. It began from the premise that the discursive level was able to tell us something about the role of ideology in the process of meaning-making, as well as in the
(re)production of social order (Chapter 1). In the context of existing theoretical debates in nationalism and communication studies, this thesis criticized the lack of attention to the social construction of communication media, particularly in relation to nationalism
(Chapter 2).
It thus proposed that this problematic can be fruitfully explored by relying on a theoretical framework bringing together Stuart Hall's model of representation
(articulation, interpellation, hegemony) and Michel Foucault's model of discursive practices (Chapter 3). This framework pointed to the relevance of the critical tradition of thinking about ideology to the study of the both the 'internet', as a communication media, and of meaning-making processes on macro and micro levels.
From the vantage point of this framework, this thesis looked into: a), how the internet in Canada was made sense of, and thus integrated within the existing social 337 structures and provided with a 'social role'; b). the social values, power interests and material infrastructures that influenced the transformation of the internet as a policy objective in Canada; c). the possible relation between these dynamics on the macro level, and their re-articulation in everyday interaction. Thus, this project proposed the following research question: How does the internet become an object of discourse in relation to nationalism and globalization in the context of policy, media and everyday life in
Canada?
In line with the theoretical model outlined in Chapter 3, this research question was examined by means of a critical discourse analysis tool. The data chosen for the analysis included the major federal policy reports on the internet and their coverage across the newspaper landscapes in Canada; these were supplemented with 29 interviews with internet users in Canada, in order to gain an insight into how the processes under investigation appeared from the perspective of everyday life (Chapter 4). The wider discursive and material context of communication media in Canada was reviewed in order to expose the historical struggles and power dynamics that have shaped the regulation of communication media in Canada (Chapter 5).
The results of the analysis were presented in three chapters (Chapter 6, 7 and 8).
The main findings can be summarized as follows:
• The construction of the internet as an object of discourse in the policy reports
revealed the increasing importance of neo-liberalism as the dominant
understanding of the social world on the part of policy-makers. Neo-liberalism,
however, was made relevant to (and legitimized for) audiences through the 338
rhetoric of Canadian nationalism. Thus, the internet was constructed as a national
economic resource which seemed to 'demand' particular roles of the government,
the industry and the citizens. These 'demands', presented as the 'national interest'
or as the reproduction of the 'nation' itself, positioned the government as an
enabler of profit-making and economic growth; thus, the government's role in the
development of the internet was to create a suitable environment for the industry.
On its side, the industry had to develop the internet in order to create the
economic growth that would allegedly allow Canada to retain its leadership
position in a 'global' marketplace. Finally, individual citizens were re-casted as
'users', responsible for the adoption of the internet (as well as for becoming a
skilled labour force) and thus, for enabling the creation of the positive
environment that could benefit the industry. Importantly, these reports constructed
an understanding of the 'global' as an economic and largely unregulated
marketplace outside the boundaries of the nation-state, permeated by obscure and
potentially threatening forces such as 'global/ foreign capital' or 'foreign (cultural)
content', within which Canada competed with other Western countries for techno-
economic leadership. In other words, the construction of the relation between the
'nation' and the 'global' served the legitimize the re-distribution of public
resources towards the industry.
• The construction of the internet in the newspapers revealed that the policy
dynamics were, in fact, responding to pre-existing social debates and
configurations of interests. The newspaper stories were the site where these 339
configuration of interests put forward claims to the distribution of resources (i.e.
public funds, regulation). In particular, the telecommunications companies
appeared as the major stakeholder in this process; perhaps not surprising, the
(contingent) alliance between them and the government became more visible in
the press: the two actors used Canadian nationalism to construct the legitimacy of
their claim to power (resources). Again, the internet was presented as an
economic tool, allegedly enabling the nation to succeed in a competitive world.
More so than in the policy reports, the main 'competitor' was the United States;
the rhetorical use of this traditional 'Other' of Canadian nationalism further added
to the legitimacy of the industry - government partnership. Importantly however,
the newspapers were also the site where the alliance between telecommunications
companies and the federal government was brought under question. Not all the
voices covered in the newspapers accepted this alliance, bringing up the necessity
for the government to represent and cater for social - and not only economic -
concerns. In this context, these voices challenged the nationalist rhetoric in the
construction of the internet; yet, in providing alternatives to its economic
construction, they equally invoked the discourse of Canadian nationalism to
legitimize them.
• The construction of the internet as an object of discourse in everyday life was, to
some extent, different than the policy and media articulations. For once,
interviewees did not invoke the image of the 'global' as a competitive
marketplace; instead, they imagined the 'global' as a space of social interactions 340 and communication that often crossed national borders. Interestingly, respondents often juxtaposed the image of the internet as a space of endless possibilities, freedom and agency, to that of the internet as a space of (American) corporate control, of technological inevitability, and of cultural homogeneity. When discussing the 'internet-in-general', respondents mainly drew from a technological determinism and the popularization discourses on the internet discussed in
Chapter 1. In such cases, the emphasis was on freedom, possibility, and individual choice; this image of the internet as a space of possibility cannot be divorced from a neo-liberal view of choice and individual responsibility as the central pillars of a just society. However, in thinking about the internet in terms of their own use, the internet became represented as a social space where national frames remained important, even though most of the times they were unconscious or implied
(rather than explicitly recognized). In this context, nationalism provided the discursive resources through which respondents identified and interpreted content or interactions online. This pointed to the relevance of existing social mechanisms of categorization and boundary-making online. Importantly, these classification systems seemed recommended (or introduced) by the technological configurations of the internet. In this respect, the respondents constructed an image of the 'internet' as increasingly selecting and sorting users and content in terms of national borders. Last, but not least, in the interviews, the construction of the internet into an object of discourse was a site where respondents negotiated the articulation of this technology in relation to their own identities. Of uttermost importance here was centrality of agency (or choice) in these articulations: 341
almost all of the respondents insisted on presenting themselves as agents,
negotiating the material and symbolic contexts of their own internet use against
particular discourses - nationalism, globalization, technological determinism, neo-
liberal individualism. Yet, to a certain extent, the lens of personal choice and
personal responsibility cannot be divorced from the neo-liberal prescription of
individualism as the means to creating the best society; what is obscured in this
process is the degree to which this individualism is, in fact, appropriated by and
integrated into the capitalist system. In this sense, the respondents' increased
concern with the corporatization (Americanization) of the internet also spoke of
the tension between agency and structure.
10.2 Significance and future directions
These results indicate that the construction of the internet as an object of discourse has to be understood as a complex and context-specific process. The (contingent) alliance of the telecommunication companies and the government is part and parcel of the hegemonic adjustment of nationalism and neo-liberalism (Chapter 9). Furthermore, the question of the relation between the macro constructions of the internet and the micro conceptualizations of this medium points to the existence of a gap between the two. Yet, the significance of this gap remains to be further investigated (Chapter 9).
10.2.1 The nationalization of communication media
Generally speaking, these dynamics can be interpreted as a process through which the internet becomes gradually invested with nation-building capacities. In this picture, the 'global' often re-enforces the 'nation' and vice-versa. Thus, the nationalization of the internet constructs an understanding of the latter as a national space, as well as a tool through which the nation can achieve international competitiveness and domestic economic growth. In this process, economic interests are placed under the broader umbrella of 'national interest', while the latter becomes articulated in primarily economic terms (e.g. growth, jobs, exports etc.).
This process of nationalization remains, in my view, a crucial direction for future research. Neither communication (media) studies, nor social studies of technologies devote enough critical attention to the role and the significance of nationalism in the conceptualization of the internet. While capitalism (and particularly neoliberalism) has elicited the attention of various scholars such as Vincent Mosco, Armand Mattelart,
Frank Webster or Nicholas Garnham, nationalism continues to remain neglected. For example, a recent contribution to the field by Eran Fisher (2010) focused exclusively on the discourses around networks and their relation to capitalist ideology. Fisher argued that the relation between technology and society is, by its very nature, ideological; the discourse of networks is seen as the new means through which a capitalist system constructs its legitimacy: "this techno-social constellation of a strong market, a weak state, an empowered individual, and a privatized social sphere is presented as the pinnacle of human progress and as an apolitical situation that has no political alternatives and is hence heralded as the end of history" (2010, p. 11). Yet, this thesis shows that the coupling of nationalism and neo-liberal economic discourses cannot - and should not - be ignored. 10.2.2 The endurance of nationalism
The endurance of nationalism as a discourse for making sense of the internet in Canada
(Chapter 9), as well as elsewhere, is something to be further reflected upon. This endurance has many facets, from the political functions of constructing legitimacy and mobilizing the support of the stakeholders, to the 'banal flagging' of the 'nation' in everyday life (Billig, 1995). The nation remains one of the crucial backgrounds against which individuals construct their identities, as well as make sense of 'new' communication media. It is perhaps important to remember that this reliance cannot be divorced from the mutual constitution of discourse and material structures: nationalism seems to remain important because the social structure recommends it; yet, the reverse is equally true: the social structure recommends nationalism because of this discourse's endurance.
Let me go back here to the initial proposal that examining the discursive construction of the internet is able to shed light on inequalities and concerns percolating in the social imaginary. As Eran Fisher notes, the conceptualization of new media "is indeed precisely that body of knowledge that epitomizes this contemporary awe and the feeling that network technology changes everything, remaking society in its own image"
(2010, p. 15). The results of the analysis undertook here point to the fact that the 'nation' remains an important mechanism of drawing borders around meanings, around people, around economic exchanges and around power networks. Yet, in spite of what nationalism claims, these borders are never clear-cut. The articulations of the internet described here are indicative of some of the questions we ask of these 'borders': Who is able to cross them? Is the flow of information, communication or money something new? 344
And what is its significance in terms of the networks of power (understood in a
Foucaultian manner) (in)forming our identities and opening up specific subject positions for us? Such questions, I believe, are a fruitful line of continuing the ideas proposed here, particularly in terms of the reproduction of the 'nation' in the recent policy proposals for a
'digital economy' in Canada, as well as elsewhere. Importantly, what should we expect from the coalition of nationalism and neoliberalism in terms of the practices and the structures this coalition legitimizes?
10.2.3 The ongoing relevance of 'discourse' as an analytical tool
Another significant contribution of this thesis is to show the heuristic usefulness (as well as the limitations) of the Foucaultian model of discourse (Chapter 9). By espousing this model as a theoretical model, this thesis was able to recover important questions around the social construction of the internet. Thus, it was able to question the power relations behind the various articulations of the internet put forward in policy reports, in newspaper stories or in everyday life conversations.
In his last lectures, Foucault (2007) argued that the modern political sphere was formed by the demand to govern a new political subject, namely the 'population'.
Foucault identified this as the drive for the development of a new mentality of government - or govemmentality (Kendall & Wickham, 2004): a way of governing that is concerned "not so much [with] the imposition of one's will over another, as [with] the insertion of a certain way of thinking and doing within the fabric of everyday life"
(Kendall & Wickham, 2004, p. 143). Although the framework of govemmentality has not been explored in this thesis, I think it constitutes an important avenue of future research, 345 particularly in the context of the continuing debates on the social role of the internet in the Canadian context (see Chapter 5). Debates over privacy and security, over access and cost, over net neutrality, over the role of ICTs in the economy of Canada are crucial sites where new techniques of government are articulated and disputed. The most important suggestion that this thesis made is that about the retreat of the Canadian state from providing for social welfare and concerns, to creating a 'positive' environment for profit- making activities. Although this thesis is certainly not the first one to note these dynamics, examining them in relation to the social construction of the internet remains, I believe, an important future line of research.
10.2.4 Communication flows and the macro/ micro gap
As already mentioned, the question of the relation between macro and micro levels in respect to the flow of communication remains particularly important. This thesis suggested that articulations in macro spheres are, to a great extent, overlapping. However, this did not seem to be the case at the level of mundane meaning-making. At the same time however, the reliance on broader discourses (e.g. nationalism, neo-liberalism, technological determinism) to articulate images of the internet that served the particular goals of the 'author' (e.g. whether anonymous authors such as the 'industry', or specific individuals) connected the macro and the micro levels.
Methodologically, this problematic raises the question of how it could be possible to analyze the communicative flow across different social spheres. Theoretically, this problematic recommends that the circulation of meaning is complex and depends, to a great extent, on our willingness to consider discourses and power as important topics of 346 analysis. For, if the critical tradition suggested that macro power dynamics constrain micro interactions, this research has shown that such 'constraints' are not necessarily oppressive. Furthermore, the ways in which these negotiations in the context of micro interactions make an impact on macro power dynamics and discourses remains something to be further reflected upon. The theoretical framework espoused here recommends that individual meaning-making necessarily involves both constraints and the space for resistance. But under what conditions does this dialectic amount to social change?
10.2.5 A social systems theory approach to ideology and technology?
In the end of this thesis, I want to briefly question the potential of a different theoretical framework - Niklas Luhmann's (1982) system theory - to the analysis of the role of various discourses in the social construction of the internet. In his work, Luhmann argued that society should be looked at in terms of how it survives within a changing/ hostile environment. He proposed that society is a complex system made up of autonomous, yet inter-dependent, sub-systems. These sub-systems are functionally differentiated, meaning each of them is processing a specific type of information from the environment and seeks to develop mechanisms of adaptation based on that information.
This, I propose, may be a fruitful way of interrogating both the endurance of certain discourses in terms of their capacity to facilitate meaning-making across various social spheres, acting as a type of translator between the concerns, vocabularies and configurations of each sphere and thus enabling the communicative flow across them.
Importantly, this process of the reproduction of the conditions under which something 347 can be made meaningful cannot be divorced from reflecting on the reproduction of social order. In this sense, this thesis has proposed that the articulation of the internet as an object of discourse is specific to each social sphere; nationalism appears as a communicative mechanism through which environmental changes (whether such changes are understood as the introduction of the internet, or the increase claim to power rooted in a neo-liberal discourse of legitimacy and authority) are being reformulated and introduced to audiences235.
235 This proposal is similar to Luhmann's suggestion that each sub-system is, in fact, a communicative ensemble whose own existence as a sub-system rests upon an ongoing informational exchange through which the sub-system adjusts to environmental changes (by making the information about that change meaningful to itself and thus integrating it withm its own internal dynamics) Bibliography Abbate, J. (2001). Government, business, and the making of the Internet. Business History Review, 75(1), 147-176. Abramson, D. (2002). Internet globalization and the political economy of infrastructure. In G. Elmer (Ed.), Critical Perspectives on the Internet (183-202). Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers Inc. Abramson, D., & Raboy, M. (1999). Policy globalization and the 'Information Society': A view from Canada. Telecommunications Policy, 25(10/11), 775-791. Adorno, T. (1967/1975). Culture industry reconsidered. New German Critique 6, 12-19. Adorno, T. (1969/1985). On the question: 'What is German'?. New German Critique, 36, 121-131. Adorno, T. (2001). Kant's 'Critiqueof Pure Reason'. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Adria, M. (2003). Arms to communications: Idealist and pragmatist strains of Canadian thought on technology and nationalism. Canadian Journal of Communication, 28(2), 167-184. Adria, M. (2010). Technology and Nationalism. Montreal, QB: McGill-Queen's University Press. Agar, J. (2005). Medium meets message: Can Media History and History of Technology communicate? Journal of Contemporary History, 40(4), 793-803. Ajzenstat, J. (2003). Canada's Founding Debates. Toronto, ON, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised edition, 1991. New York, NY: Verso. Anderson, B. (1992). Long-distance nationalism: World capitalism and the rise of identity politics. In Anderson, B. The Wertheim Lecture 1992. Amsterdam: Centre for Asian Studies. Anderson, B. (1994). Exodus. Critical Inquiry, 20(2), 314-327. Anderson, B. (2010). Western nationalism and Eastern nationalism. Is there a difference that matters?. New Left Review P(May-June), 31-42. 349
Andersson, M. (2010). The social imaginary of first generation Europeans. Social Identities, 16(1), 3 - 21. Antaki, C, Billig, M., Edwards, D., & Potter, J. (2002). Discoure analysis means doing analysis: A critique of six analytic shortcomings. Discourse Analysis Online, 1(1), Retrieved March 17, 2010 from http://extra.shu.ac.uk/daol/articles/vl/nl/al/antaki2002002.html.
Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Appadurai, A. (2000). Grassroots globalization and the research imagination. Public Culture, 72(1), 1-19.
Archer, K., Bosman, M. M., Amen, M. M., & Schmidt E. (Eds.) (2008). Cultures of Globalization. Coherence, Hybridity, Contestation. London: Routledge.
Aronczyk, M. (2008). Branding the Nation. Mediating Space, Value and Identity in the Context of Global Culture. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, New York University.
Arnason, J. P. (1990). Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity. Theory, Culture and Society, 7(2), 207-236.
Arthur, C. J. (1970). Introduction. In K. Marx & F. Engels, The German Ideology. Part One with Selections from Part 2 and 3 and Supplementary Texts (3-36). Ed. by Christopher John Arthur. Lawrence & Wishart
Attallah, P. (1991). Theories de la Communication. Sens, Sujets, Savoirs. Quebec, QB: Presses de l'Universite du Qubebec, Tele-Universite.
Attallah, P., & Foster, D. (2002). Television in Canada. In P. Attallah & L. Regan Shade (Eds.), Mediascapes: New patterns in Canadian communication (179-95). Toronto, ON: Nelson Press.
Babe, R. (1990). Telecommunications in Canada: technology, industry, and government. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. 350
Babe, R. (1996). Convergence and new technologies. In M. Dorland (Ed.), The Cultural Industries in Canada. Problems, Policies and Prospects (283-306). Toronto, ON: James Lorimer & Co.
Babe, R.E. (2000). Canadian Communication Thought. Ten Foundational Writers. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Bakardjieva, M. (2005). Internet Society. The Internet in Everyday Life. London: Sage Publications.
Banton, M. (2007). Max Weber on 'Ethnic Communities': A Critique. Nations and Nationalism, 13(1), 19-35.
Barkan, E. (2003). Race and the Social Sciences. In T. M. Porter & D. Ross (Eds.), The Modern Social Sciences (693-707). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barney, D. (2005). Communication Technology. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press.
Barratt, N., & Shade, L. (2007). Net Neutrality. Telecom Policy and the Public Interest. Canadian Journal of Communication, 32(2), 295-305.
Barrett, M. (2007). Children's Knowledge, Beliefs and Feelings about Nations and National Groups. Hove: Psychology Press.
Bashevkin, S. (1988). Does Public Opinion Matter? The Adoption of Federal Royal Commission and Task Force Recommendations on the National Question, 1951- 1987. Canadian Public Administration, 31(1), 390-407. Baudrillard, J. (1981/1994). Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.
Baudrillard, J. (1968/1996). The System of Objects. Trans. James Benedict. New York, NY: Verso.
Baxter, L. A., & Babbie, E. (2004). The Basics of Communication Research. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/ Thomson Learning.
Beaugrande, R. de (2006). Critical Discourse Analysis: History, Ideology, Methodology. Studies in Language and Capitalism, 1, 29-56.
Beck, U. (2000). What is Globalization?. Cambridge: Polity Press. 351
Beck, U. (2007). The Cosmopolitan Condition: Why Methodological Nationalism Fails. Theory, Culture & Society, 24 (7-8), 286-90.
Bereciartu, G. J. (1986/1994). Decline of the Nation-State. Trans. W.A. Douglas.Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press.
Berg, B.L. (2007). Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences. 6th Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.
Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1966/1991). The Social Construction of Reality. A Treaties in the Sociology of Knowledge. Penguin Books.
Berton, P. (1971). The Last Spike: The Great Railway, 1881-1885. Toronto, ON: McClelland and Stewart. Best, S., Kellner, D. (1997). The Postmodern Turn. New York, NY: The Guilford Press Bhabha, H. (1990). Introduction: Narrating the Nation. In H, Bhabha (Ed.), Nation and Narration (1-7). New York, NY: Routledge.
Bhabha, H. (1994). The Location of Culture. New York, NY: Routledge.
Bickerton, J., Brooks, S., & Gagnon, A.G. (2006). Freedom, Equality, Community. The Political Philosophy of Six Influential Canadians. Montreal, QB: McGill-Queen's University Press.
Bigo, D., Walker, R. B. J. (2007). Political Sociology and the Problem of the International. Millenium - Journal of International Studies, 35(3), 725-739.
Bijker, W.E., Hughes, T.P., & Pinch, T.J. (1989). The Social construction of technological systems: new directions in the sociology and history of technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bijker, W. E., Law, J. (Eds.) (1992) Shaping Technology/ Building Society. Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, London: The MIT Press. Billig, M. (1995). Banal Nationalism. London: Sage.
Billig, M. (2008). The Language of Critical Discourse Analysis: The Case of Nominalization. Discourse & Society, 19(6), 783-800. 352
Bishop, H., Jaworski, A. (2003). 'We beat 'em': Nationalism and the Hegemony of Homogeneity in the British Press Reportage of Germany versus England during Euro 2000. Discourse & Society, 14(3), 243-271.
Bloomaert, J., Bulcaen, C. (2000). Critical Discourse Analysis. Annual Review of Anthropology 29(1), 447-466.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). Les Conditions Sociales de la Circulation Internationale des Idees. Les Cahiers d'histoire des litteratures romanes, 1-2, 1-10. Retrieved from http:// www.espacesse.org/fr/bourdieu_conditions_circulation_web.pdf (January 2009). Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press. Boswell, D., Evans, J. (Eds.) (1999). Representing the Nation: A Reader. Histories, heritage and museums. London & NY: Routledge.
Breton, R. (1988). From Ethnic to Civic Nationalism. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 11(1), 85-102.
Breton, P., Proulx, S. (2002). L'Explosion de la communication a I'aube du xxf siecle. Boreal/ La Decouverte.
Brennan, T.J. (2008). Skating Toward Deregulation: Canadian Developments. Federal Communications Law Journal, 60(2), 325-357.
Breuilly, J. (1982). Nationalism and the State. Manchester University Press.
Breuilly, J. (2006). Introduction. In Ernest Gellner. Nations and Nationalism (xiii - liii). 2nd edition. Maiden: Blackwell Publishing.
Brint, M. (2001). The Politics of Identity and the Culture of Global Technology. In R. Lukic & M. Brint (Eds.), Culture, Politics, and Nationalism in the Age of Globalization (3-28). Aldershot: Ashgate. Brodie, J. (2002). Citizenship and Solidarity: Reflections on the Canadian Way. Citizenship Studies 6(4), p. 377-394.
Brubaker, R. (1996). Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brubaker, R., & Cooper, F. (2000). Beyond Identity. Theory and Society, 29(1), 1-47. Bumsted, J. (2001). Visions of Canada: A Brief History of Writing on the Canadian Character and the Canadian Identity. In D. Taras & B. Rasporich (Eds.), A Passion for Identity. Canadian Studies for the 2P' Century (17-35). Scarborough, ON: Nelson Thomson Learning. Burrowes, C. P. (1996). From Functionalism to Cultural Studies: Manifest Ruptures and Latent Continuities. Communication Theory, 6{\), 88-103.
Calhoun, C. (1991). Indirect Relationships and Imagined Communities: Large-Scale Social Integration and the Transformation of Everyday Life. In P. Bourdieu, J.S. Coleman (Eds.), Social Theory for a Changing Society (95-120). Boulder: Westview Press.
Calhoun, C. (1997). Nationalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Calhoun, C. (1999). Nationalism, Political Community and the Representation of Society. Or, Why Feeling at Home is not a Substitue for the Public Space. European Journal of Social Theory, 2(2), 217-231.
Calhoun, C. (2006). Nationalism Matters. In D.H. Doyle & M.A. Pamplona (Eds.) Nationalism in the New World, (16-40). Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Calhoun, C. (2008). Cosmpolitanism and Nationalism. Nations and Nationalisms, 14(3), 427-448.
Canada. Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) (1995). Competition and Culture on Canada's Information Highway: Managing the Realities of Transition. Ottawa: Public Works and Government Services Canada. Available at: http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/HIGHWAY/HWY9505.HTM (February 2011).
Canada. Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) (1998). Public Notice CRTC 1998-82, available at http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/1998/PB98-82.htm (November 2009). Canada. Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) (2008). Broadcasting Public Notice CRTC 2008-44. Available at http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2008/pb2008-44.htm (March 2011). 354
Canada. Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) (2009). Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2009-657. Review of Internet Traffic Management Practices of Internet Service Providers. Available at http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2009/2009-657.htm (March 2011). Canada. Industry Canada (1994). The Canadian Information Highway: Building Canada's Information and Communication Infrastructure. Ottawa: Industry Canada. Spectrum, Information Technologies, and Telecommunication Sector.
Canada. Industry Canada. (1996). Building the Information Society: Moving Canada into the 21st Century. May. Ottawa: Ministry of Supply and Services. Canada. Industry Canada (1997). Towards a Learning Nation: The Digital Contribution, Task Force on Digitization. Available at: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/8/3/ r3-407-e.html (February 2011). Canada. Industry Canada. (2001). The new national dream: Networking the nation for broadband access. Ottawa: National Broadband Task Force. Available at: http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Collection/C2-574-2001E.pdf (February 2011). Canada. Industry Canada (2006). Telecommunications Policy Review Panel. Final Report. Ottawa: Industry Canada. Canada. Industry Canada (2009). Canadian ICT Sector Profile. Last update: August, 2009. Available at http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ict-tic.nsf/eng/h_it07229.html (accessed December 2009). Canada. Information Highway Advisory Council (IHAC) (1995) Connection Community Content: The Challenge of the Information Highway. Final Report of the Information Highway. Ottawa: Ministry of Supply and Services.
Canada. Information Highway Advisory Council (1997). Preparing Canada for a Digital World: Final Report of the Information Highway Advisory Council. Ottawa: Industry Canada. Canada. Ministry of Supply and Services (1979). Telecommunications and Canada. Consultative Committee on the Implications of Telecommunications for Canadian Sovereignty. Hull: Ministry of Supply and Services. 355
Canada. Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences, 1949-1951 (Massey Commission Report) (1951). Report. Ottawa, ON: King's Printer. Carey, J. (1998). The Internet and the End of the National Communication System: Uncertain Predictions of an Uncertain Future. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 75(1), 28-34.
Carley, K. (1986). An Approach for Relating Social Structure to Cognitive Structure. Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 12(2), 137-189.
Carley, K. (1997). Extracting Team Mental Models through Textual Analysis. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 18, 533-558.
Carley, K., Palmquist, M. (1992). Extracting, Representing and Analyzing Mental Models. Social Forces, 70(3), 601-636.
Castells, M. (2000). The Network Society. Economy, Society and Culture. Volume I: The Rise of the Network Society. 2nd edition. Maiden: Blackwell Publishing.
Castells, M. (2004). The Power of Identity. 2n edition. Maiden: Blackwell Publishing.
Chaffee, S.H, Rogers, E.M. (1997). The Establishment of Communication Study in America. In W. Schramm, The Beginnings of Communication Study in America. A Personal Memoir. Edited by Steven H. Chaffee and Everett M. Rogers (125- 180). Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Chan, B. (2005). Imagining the Homeland: The Internet and Diasporic Discourse of Nationalism. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 29(4), 336-368.
Chandler, D. (1994). The Transmission Model of Communication. Retrieved from http:// www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/trans.html#D. (January 2009). Charland, M. (1986). Technological Nationalism. Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, 10(1), 196-220. Cheek, J. (2004). At the Margins? Discourse Analysis and Qualitative Research. Qualitative Health Research 14(8), 1140-1150.
Chernilo, D. (2006). Social Theory's Methodological Nationalism. Myth and Reality. European Journal of Social Theory, 9(1), 5-22. Chernilo, D. (2007). A Social Theory of the Nation-state: The Political Forms of Modernity Beyond Methodological Nationalism. New York: Routledge Chilton, P. (2005). Missing links in mainstream CDA. Modules, blends and the critical instinct. In R. Wodak (Ed.) New Agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis: Theory, Methodology and Interdisciplinarity (19-51). Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Coalition formed for information highway. 28 U.S. firms to set standards. (December 14, 1993). The Globe and Mail, p. B5. Cohen, A. (1996a). Owning the Nation, and the Personal Nature of Nationalism: Locality and the Rhetoric of Nationhood in Scotland. In V. Amit-Talai, V. Amit & C. Knowles (Eds) Re-Situating Identities: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Culture (267-282). Broadview Press. Cohen, A. (1996b). Personal Nationalism: A Scottish View of Some Rites, Rights, and Wrongs. American Ethnologist, 23(4), 802-815.
Connor, S. (2000). Cultural Sociology and Cultural Studies. In B. S. Turner (Ed.) The Blackwell Companion to Social Theory (352-385). Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Cook, R. (2004). Canada: A post-nationalist nation?. In S. Godfrey & F. Unger (Eds.) The Shifting Foundatoins of Modern Nation-States (17-34). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Corcoran, T. (1995). Info highway needs foreign capital. The Globe and Mail, Sept. 30, 1995, B2 Corner, J., Hawthorn, J. (1990). Communication Studies. An Introductory Reader. 3r d Edition, London, New York, Melbourne, Auckland: Edward Arnold. Coupland, D. (1995). Microserfs. New York: Harper Collins Publisher. Crotty, M. (1998). The Foundations of Social Research. Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process. London: Sage. Curran, J. (1990). The New Revisionism in Mass Communication Research: A Reappraisal. European Journal of Communication, 5, 135-164. 357
Curran, J. (2006). Media and Cultural Theory in the Age of Market Liberalism. In J. Curran & D. Morley (Eds.) Media and Cultural Theory (128-148). London and New York: Routledge. Curran, J., Park, M.J. (2000). De-Westernizing Media Studies. New York, NY: Routledge. Cusack, J. (2005). Tiny Transmitters of Nationalist and Colonial Ideology: the Postage Stamps of Portugal and Its Empire. Nations and Nationalism, 11(4), 591-612. Czitrom, D. (1982). Media and the American Mind. From Morse to McLuhan. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press Darling-Wolf, F. (2004). Virtually multicultural: trans-Asian identity and gender in an international fan community of a Japanese star. New Media & Society, 6(4), 507- 528. Day, R. (2001). The Modern Invention of Information: Discourse, History, and Power. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. De Tracy, D (1817). Elements D'Ideologie I. Ideologic Proprement Dite. 1970 edition. Introduction et appendices par Henri Gouhier. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin Deibert, R.J. (1997). Parchment, Printing and Hypermedia. Comunications in World Order Transformation. New York: Columbia Univeristy Press Delanty, G. (2000).The Foundations of Social Theory: Origins and Trajectories. In B. S. Turner (Ed.) The Blackwell Companion to Social Theory (21-46). Maiden: Blackwell Publishers. Delia, J. (1987). Communication Research: A History. In Ch. R. Berger & S.H. Chaffee (Eds.) Handbook of Communication Science (20-98). Newbury Park, Beverly Hills, London, New Delhi: Sage Publications. Denzin, N., Lincoln, Y.S. (Eds.) (2002). The qualitative inquiry reader. Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi: Sage Publications. Deutsch, K. (1953). Nationalism and Social Communication. An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality. New York, NY: The Technology Press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology & Jon Wiley & Sons, Inc. Deutsch, K. (1969). Nationalism and Its Alternatives. New York, NY: Alfred Knopf. 358
Deutsch, K. (1986). This week's citation classic. IS1Current Contents, 19 (May 12), p. 18, retrieved from http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/classicsl986/A1986C096500001.pdf (April 2011). Ditchev, I. (1998). The machines of forgetting. Retrieved from http://www.geocities.com/ivayloditchev2001/text.htm (June 2004) Dorner, D.G. (2002). The essential services policy network: Organizational influence in Canada's Information Highway policy development process. Library Quarterly 72(1), 27-84. Douglas, J. (1971). Understanding Everyday Life: Toward the Reconstruction of Sociological Knowledge. London: Taylor and Francis. Dumitrica, D. (2010). Choosing methods, negotiating legitimacy. A metalogue on autoethnography. Graduate Journal of Social Sciences, 7(1), 18-38. During, S. (2005). Cultural Studies. A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge. Edensor, T. (2002). National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life. Oxford, New York: Berg. Edwardson, R. (2008). Canadian Content: Culture and the Quest for Nationhood. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Eisenstein, E. (1979). The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eriksen, T. H. (2007). Nationalism and the Internet. Nations and Nationalism, 13(1), 1— 17. Esses, V.M., Gardner, R.C. (1996). Multiculturalism in Canada: Context and Current Status. Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science, 28(3), retrieved from http://wwwcpa.ca/cjbsnew/1996/full_edito.html (October 2006) Everard, J. (2000). Virtual States. The Internet and the Boundaries of the Nation-State. London and New York: Routledge. Fairclough, N. (1994). Discourse and Text: Linguistic and Intertextual Analysis within Discourse Analysis. Discourse & Society, 3(2), 193-217. 359
Fairclough, N. (2001). Critical Discourse Analysis as a method in social scientific research. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (121-138). London: Sage Publications. Featherstone, M. (1995). Undoing Culture. Globalization, Postmodernims and Identity. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications. Feenberg, A. (1999). Questioning Technology. London: Routledge. Flyvbjerg, B. (1998). Habermas and Foucault: Thinkers for Civil Society?. British Journal of Sociology, 49(2), 210-233. Fine, R. (1996). Nationalism and Its Discontents. Democratization, 3(4), 544-548. Fischer, C. (1992). America Calling. A Social History of the Telephone to 1940. Berkeley, LA, Oxford: University of California Press. Fisher, E. (2010). Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Fiske, J. (1990). Introduction to Communication Studies. 2nd Edition (2004) London, New York: Routledge. Flavelle, D. (1993). Paving the way for an electronic highway". Toronto Star, October 24, 1993, p. Gl Flew, T. (2008). New Media. An Introduction. 3rd edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Flichy, P. (2007). The Internet Imaginaire. Trans. Liz Carey-Libbrecht. Cambridge, London: The MIT Press. Flowerdew, J. (1999). Description and interpretation in critical discourse analysis. Journal of Pragmatics, 31,1089-1099. Forbath, W. E. (1998). Review: Habermas's Constitution: A History, Guide, and Critique. Reviewed work(s): Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy by Jurgen Habermas. Law & Social Inquiry, 23(4), 969-1016 Fortner, R. (2005). Radio, Morality, & Culture: Britain, Canada, and the United States, 1919-1945. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Foucault, M. (1965/1988). Madness and Civilization. A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Vintage Books. 360
Foucault, M. (1970). The Order of Things. The Archeology of the Human Sciences. London: Tavistock Publications Foucault, M. (1972). The Archeology of Knowledge. London: Tavistock Publications Ltd. Foucault, M. (1977/ 1995). Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books. Foucault, M. (1977). Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. Selected Essays and Interviews. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press Foucault, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality. Vol 1: An introduction. New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/ Knowledge. Selected Interviews and Other Writings. Ed. by Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books Foucault, M. (1991a). Questions of Method. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon & P. Miller (Eds.) The Foucault Effect. Studies in Governmentality (73-86). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Foucault, M. (2007). Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the College de France 1977-1978. Ed. by Michel Senellart. Trans. Graham Burchell. New York: Picador. Fox, J. E., Miller-Idriss, C. (2008). Everyday Nationhood. Ethnicities, 8(4), 536-576.
Fraser, N. (2007). Transnationalizing the Public Sphere. On the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Public Opinion in a Post-Westphalian World. Theory, Culture & Society, 24(4), 7-30.
Friedman, J. (Ed.) (2003). Globalization, the State and Violence. Altamira Press.
Friesen, G. (2000). Citizens and Nation. An Essay on History, Communication, and Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Frost, K. (2001). Survey Article: The Worth of Nations. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 9(4), 482-503.
Frye, N. (2003). Northrop Frye on Modern Culture. Volume 11 of Collected Works of Northrop Frye. Ed. Jan Gorak. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 361
Fung, A.Y.H. (2002). Identity politics, resistance and new media technologies. A Foucauldian approach to the study of the HKnet. New Media & Society, 4(2), 185- 204. Galnor, I. (1980). Political Communication and the Study of Politics. In D. Nimmo (Ed.) Communication Yearbook 4 (99-112). New Brunswick and London: Transaction Books.
Gane, N. (2002). Max Weber and Postmodern Theory. Rationalization versus Re- enchantment. Houndmills: Palgrave.
Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, Peace and Peace Research. Journal of Peace Research 6(3), pp. 167-191
Galtung, J. (1996). Peace by Peaceful Means. Peace and Conflict, Development and Civilization. Oslo: Prio, London: Sage Publications.
Garnham, N. (2000). Information Society' as Theory or Ideology. A Critical Perspective on Technology, Education and Employment in the Information Society. Information, Communication & Society, 3(2), 139-152.
Gasher, M. (1998). Invoking Public Support for Public Broadcasting: The Aird Commission Revisited. Canadian Journal of Communication 23(2), available at http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/viewArticle/1032/938 (October 2009).
Gee, J. P. (1999). Introduction to Discourse Analysis. Theory and Method. London: Routledge.
Gee, P. (2008). Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses. 3rd Edition. Routledge. Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, (Reprinted in 1999).
Gellner, E. (1994). Conditions of Liberty. Civil Society and Its Rivals. Penguin Books.
Giddens, A. (1990). The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. 362
Gill, F. (2005). Public and Private: National Identities in a Scottish Borders Community. Nations and Nationalism, 11(1), 83-102.
Gilroy, P. (1987). 'There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack'. The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation. London, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, Johannesburg: Hutchinson.
Gilroy, P. (1993). The Black Atlantic. Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Goggin, G. (Ed.) (2004). Virtual Nation. The Internet in Australia. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.
Gorski, P. S. (2000). The Mosaic Moment: An Early Modernist Critique of Modernist Theories of Nationalism. American Journal of Sociology, 105(5), 1428-1468.
Graham, S. (1998). The End of Geography or the Explosion of Place? Conceptualizing Space, Place and Information Technology. Progress in Human Geography, 22(2), 165-185.
Greenberg, R. D. (2000). Language Politics in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: The Crisis over the Future of Serbian. Slavic Review, 59(3), 625-640. Greenfeld, L. (1992). Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Grint, K., Woolgar, S. (1997). The Machine at Work. Technology, Work, Organization. Cambridge: Polity Press. Grossberg, L. (1986). History, Politics and Postmodernism: Stuart Hall and Cultural Studies. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 10(2), 61-77. Grossberg, L. (2009). The Conversation of Cultural Studies. Cultural Studies, 25(2), 177- 182. Guibernau, M. (1999). Nations without States. Political Communities in a Global Age. Polity Press Habermas, J. (1962/1991). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Trans. By Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge: MIT Press. Habermas, J. (1968/1971). Technology and Science as 'Ideology. In J. Habermas, Toward a Rational Society . Student Protest, Science and Politics. Trans. Jeremy Shapiro (81-122). Boston: Beacon Press. Habermas, J. (1968/1971b). Technological Progress and the Social Life-World. In J. Habermas, Toward a Rational Society. Student Protest, Science and Politics. Trans. Jeremy Shapiro (50-61). Boston: Beacon Press. Habermas, J. (1974). Habermas Talking: An Interview (with Boris Frankel). Theory and Society, 1, 37-58. Habermas, J. (1988). Historical Consciousness and Post-Traditional Identity: Remarks on the Federal Republic's Orientation to the West. Acta Sociologica, 31(1), 3-13. Habermas, J. (1991). Yet Again: German Identity: A Unified Nation of Angry DM- Burghers?. New German Critique, 52 (Winter), 84-101. Habermas, J. (1992). Citizenship and National Identity: Some Reflections on the Future of Europe. Praxis, 12(1), 1-19. Habermas, J. (1994). Burdens of the Double Past. Dissent, 41(4), 413-417. Habermas, J. (1995). Multiculturalism and the Liberal State. Stanford Law Review, 47(5), 849-853. Habermas, J. (1996). The European National State - Its Achievements and Limitations. Ratio Juris, 9(2), 125-137. Habermas, J. (1998/ 2001). The Postnational Constellation. Political Essays. Trans., ed. And with an introduction by Max Pensky. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. Habermas, J. (2006). Political Communication in Media Society: Does Democracy Still Enjoy an Epistemic Dimension? The Impact of Normative Theory on Empirical Research. Communication Theory, 16, 411-426. Habermas, J., Arnason, J.P. (2000). Globalism, Ideology and Traditions: Interview with Jiirgen Habermas. Thesis Eleven, 63(1), 1-10. Halavais, A. (2000). National borders on the world wide web. New Media & Society, 1(3), 7-28. 364
Hall, S. (1973/1980). 'Encoding/decoding'. In Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (Ed.): Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-79 (128-138). London: Hutchinson. Hall, S. (1977). Re-thinking the 'Base-and-Superstructure' Metaphor. In J. Bloomfield (Ed.) Papers on Class, Hegemony and Party (43-72). The Communist University of London. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Hall, S. (1978). The Hinterland of Science: Ideology and the 'Sociology of Knowledge. In Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies. On Ideology (9-32). London: Hutchinson. Hall, S. (1979). The Great Moving Right Show. Marxism Today, January, 14-20. Hall, S. (1980). Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms. Media, Culture and Society, 2(1), 57- 72. Hall, S. (1980a). Cultural Studies and the Centre: Some Problematics and Problems. In S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe & P. Willis (Eds.), Culture, Media, Language. Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-9 (15-47). London: Hutchinson and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham. Hall, S. (1985). Signification, Representation, Ideology: Althusser and the Post- Structuralist Debates. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 2(2), 91-114. Hall, S. (1986). Gramsci's Relevance for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 10(2), 5-28. Hall, S. (1990). Cultural Identity and Diaspora. In J. Rutherford (Ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (222-31). London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Hall, S. (1996a). Who needs identity?. In S. Hall & P. Du Gay (Eds.), Questions of Cultural Identity (1-17). London: Sage Publications.
Hall, S. (1996b). The Problem of Ideology: Marxism without Guarantees. In D. Morley & H.K. Chen. (Eds.), Stuart Hall: critical dialogues in cultural studies (25-46). London: Routledge. Hall, S. (1996c). Response to Saba Mahmood. Cultural Studies, 10(1), 12-15. Hall, S. (1997a). The Work of Representation. In S. Hall (Ed.), Representations. Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (13-64). London: Sage Publications and Open University. 365
Hall, S. (1997b). Introduction. In Stuart Hall (Ed.), Representations. Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (1-11). London: Sage Publications and Open University. Hall, S. (1999a). Culture, Community, Nation. In David Boswell and Jessica Evans (Eds.) Representing the Nation: A Reader. Histories, heritage and museums. (33- 44). London & NY: Routledge.
Hall, S. (1999b). Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies. In S. During (Ed.), The Cultural Studies Reader (97-109). 2nd edition. London: Routledge.
Hall, S. (1999c). Thinking the Diaspora: Home-Thoughts from Abroad. Small Axe, 3(6), 1-18.
Hall, S. (2003). Political Belonging in a World of Multiple Identities. In S. Vertovec & R. Choen (Eds.), Conceiving cosmopolitanism: theory, context and practice (25-31 ) Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hall, S. (2005). Whose Heritage? Un-Settling 'the Heritage,' Reimaging the Post-Nation. In J. Littler, R. Naidoo (Eds.), The Politics of Heritage: The Legacies of'Race' (23-35). London: Routledge.
Hall, S. (2007). Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy and the Cultural Turn. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(1), 39-49.
Hall, S., Back, L. (2009). At Home and Not At Home: Stuart Hall in Conversation with Les Back. Cultural Studies, 23(4), 658-687.
Hall, S., Critcher, C, Jefferson, R., Clarke, B.R. (1978). Policing the Crisis. Mugging, the State, and Law and Order. London: MacMillan Press. Hall, S., Grossberg, L. (1986). On Postmodernism and Articulation. An Interview with Stuart Hall. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 10(2), 45-60.
Hall, S., Hobson, D., Lowe, A., Willis, P. (1980). Culture, Media, Language. Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-79. London: Hutchinson and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham.
Halliday, M. K. (1985). Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold. 366
Hardt, H. (1989). The Return of the 'Critical' and the Challenge of Radical Dissent: Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, and American Mass Communication Research. In J. A. Anderson (Ed.) Communication Yearbook 12 (558-600). Newbury Park, London, New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Harootunian, H. (2004). Shadowing History: National Narratives and the Persistence of the Everyday. Cultural Studies, 18(2/3), 181-200. Harvey, D. (2007). Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction. Annals of the American A cademy of Political and Social Science, 610(1), 21 -44. Hastings, A. (1997). The Construction of Nationhood. Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hay, C, Rosamond, B. (2002). Globalization, European Integration and Discursive Construction of Economic Imperatives. Journal of European Public Policy, 9(2), 147-167. Hawkes, D. (2003). Ideology. 2nd edition. Routledge. Hearn, J. (2006). Rethinking Nationalism: A Critical Introduction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Hearn, J. (2007). National Identity: Banal, Personal and Embedded. Nations and Nationalism, 13(4), 657-674.
Heath, R.L., Bryant, J. (2000). Human Communication Theory and Research. Concepts, Contexts, and Challenges. 2nd Edition. Mahwah, New Jersey, London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Hechter, M. (2000). Containing Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Held, D., McGrew, A., Goldblatt, D., Perraton, D.(1999). Global Transformation. Politics, Economics and Culture. Standford: Stanford University Press.
Helsloot, N., Hak, T. (2008). Pecheux's Contribution to Discourse Analysis. Historical Social Review, 33(1), 162-184.
Heyer, P. (2003). HaroldInnis. Lnham, Boulder, NY, Toronto, Oxford: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers Inc. 367
Higgins, N. (2004). Putting the Nation in the News: the Role of Location Formulation in a Selection of Scottish Newspapers. Discourse & Society, 15(5), 633-648.
Highmore, B. (2002). Everyday Life and Cultural Theory. An Introduction. London & NY: Routledge.
Hiller, H.H., Franz, T.M. (2004). New ties, old ties and lost ties: the use of the internet in diaspora. New Media & Society, 6(6), 731-752. Hiroko, T. (2008). Delicious Food in a Beautiful Country: Nationhood and Nationalism in Discourses on Food in Contemporary Japan. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 8(1), 5-29.
Hirst, P., Thompson, G. (1996). Globalization in question: the international economy and the possibilities of governance. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hobsbawm, E. (1990). Nations and nationalism since 1780. Programme, myth, reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hobsbawm, E. (1994). Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991. London: Abacus.
Hobsbawm, E. (2010). World Distempers. New Left Review, 61 (January-February): 133- 50
Hodge, R., Kress, G. (1988). Social Semiotics. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.
Hohendahl, P. U. (1985). The Dialectic of Enlightenment Revisited: Habermas' Critique of the Frankfurt School. New German Critique, No. 35, Special Issue on Jiirgen Habermas (Spring - Summer), 3-26.
Holstein, J. A., Gubrium, J. F. (1999). Active Interviewing. In A. Bryman & R. G. Burgess (Eds.), Qualitative Research (105-121). Vol. II. London: Sage Publications.
Horkheimer, M. (1937/1982).Traditional and Critical Theory. In M. Horkeimer, Critical Theory: Selected Essays (188-243). Vol. I. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. 368
Horkheimer, M., Adorno, T. (2002). Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Contributor Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, Edmund Jephcott. Standford University Press.
Hur, K.K. (1982). International Mass Communication Research: A Critical Review of Theory and Method. In M. Burgeon, N. E. Doran (Eds.), Communication Yearbook 6 (531-554). Beverly Hills, London, New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Huspek, M. (1997).Toward Normative Theories of Communication with Reference to the Frankfurt School: An Introduction. Communication Theory, 7(4), 265-276.
Huyssen, A. (1975). Introduction to Adorno. New German Critique, 6 (Autumn), 3-11.
Hutchinson, D. (1999). Media Policy. An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Hutchinson, J. (1993). Moral Innovators and the Politics of Regeneration: the Distinctive Role of Cultural Nationalists in Nation-Building. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 33(1-2), 101-17.
Hutchinson, J. (1999). Re-Interpreting Cultural Nationalism. Australian Journal of Politics and History, 45(3), 392-407.
Hutchinson, J. (2001). Nations and Culture. In M. Guiberneau & J. Hutchinson (Eds.), Understanding Nationalism (74-96). Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hutchinson, J. (2006). Interview with John Hutchinson for H-Net. Retrieved from http:// www.h-net.org/~national/Hutchinson.html (December 13. 2008)
Ichijo, A., Uzelac, G. (2005). When is the Nation?: Towards an Understanding of Theories of Nationalism. London: Routledge
"Information highway hits political dead end" (October 12, 1993). The Ottawa Citizen, p. Fl Innis, H. (1951/2003). The Bias of Communication. Toronto, Buffallo, London: University of Toronto Press. International Telecommunications Union (ITU) (2003). Promoting broadband: The case of Canada. ITU Workshop on promoting broadband, Geneva 9-11, 2003. Retrieved from 369
http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/ni/promotebroadband/casestudies/canada.pdf (March 2011). Internet World Statistics (2007). Canada Internet and Broadband Usage. Telecom Statistics. Retrieved from http://www.internetworldstats.com/am/ca.htm (December 2009). Jaffrelot, C. (2003). For a Theory of Nationalism. Questions de Recherche/ Research in Question No. 10, Centre d'etudes et de recherches internationals Science Po, retrieved from http://www.ceri-sciences-po.org/publica/qdr.htm (January 2008). Jager, S. (2001). Discourse and Knowledge: Theoretical and Methodological Aspects of Critical Discourse and Dispositive Analysis. In Ruth Wodak (Ed.) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (32-62). London: Sage. Jameson, F. (1984).The Politics of Theory: Ideological Positions in the Postmodernism Debate. New German Critique, 33, 53-65. Jansen, S. C. (2008). Designer nations: Neo-liberal nation-branding - Brand Estonia. Social Identities, 14(1), 121-142. Jay, M. (1990). The Jews and the Frankfurt School: Critical Theory's Analysis of Anti- Semitism. New German Critique, 19(1), 137-149. Jay, M. (1994). The Frankfurt School's Critique of Karl Mannheim and the Sociology of Knolwedge. In J. M. Bernstein (Ed.), The Frankfurt School: Critical Assessments (175-190). Taylor and Francis. Jessop, B. (1990). State Theory. Putting the Capitalist state in its Place. The Pennsylvania State University Press. Joseph, J. (2002). Hegemony. A Realist Analysis. London and New York: Routledge. Kainz, A. (1993). Cultivating Couch Potatoe Is Crucial to Info-Higwhay. The Ottawa Citizen, December 30, 1993, p. D4. Kainz, A. (1994). Users Are Revved-Up about OCRINet, Touted as the Prototype for Canada's New Information Highway. The Ottawa Citizen, January 29, 1994, p. Bl Kaldor, M. (2004). Nationalism and Globalization. Nations and Nationalism, 10(1/2), 161-177. Katz, E., & Lazarsfeld, P. (1955). Personal Influence. New York: The Free Press. 370
Kedourie, E. (1960/1994). Nationalism. Oxford & Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 4th edition Kellas, J.C. (1991). The Politics of Nationalism and Ethnicity. London: Macmillan. Kellner, D. (n/a). The Frankfurt School and British Cultural Studies: The missed articulation. Retrieved from http://www.uta.edu/huma/illuminations/kelll6.htm (March 5, 2009). Kellner, D. (1988). Postmodernism as social theory: Some challenges and problems. Theory, Culture & Society, 5(2), 239-269. Kellner, D. (1993). Critical Theory Today: Revisiting the Classics. Theory, Culture & Society, 10(2), 43-60. Kellner, D. (1995a). Media communications vs. cultural studies: Overcoming the divide. Communication Theory, 5(2), 162-177. Kellner, D. (1995b). Media Culture. Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics Between the Modern and the Postmodern. London: Routledge. Kendall, G., & Wickham, G. (2004). The Foucaultian framework. In Clive Seale, Giampietro Gobo, Jaber F. Gubrium and David Silverman's (Eds.), Qualitative Research Practice (141-150). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Kern, S. (1983). The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kitromilides, P. (1998). The debt of a student of nationalism. In Kedourie, S. (Ed.), Elie Kedourie, CBE, FBA, 1926-1992 (92-98). London: Frank Kass. Kohn, H. (1944). The Idea of Nationalism. A Study in Its Origins and Background. New York, NY: Collier Books. Kozlarek, O. (2006). Theodor W. Adorno and Octavio Paz: Two visions of modernity. Culture, Theory & Society, 47(1), 39-52. Krippendorff, K. (1994). The past of communication's hoped-for-future. In Mark R. Levy & Michael Gurevitch (Eds.), Defining Media Studies. Reflections on the Future of the Field (pp. 42-52). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kroker, A. (1984). Technology and the Canadian Mind. Innis/McLuhanf Grant. Montreal, QB: New World Perspectives. 371
Kuipers, C. (2006). The social construction of digital danger: Debating, defusing and inflating the moral dangers of online humor and pornography in the Netherlands and the United States. New Media & Society, 8(3), 379-400. Kymlicka, W. (1995). Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lafontaine, C. (2007). The cybernetic matrix of'French theory'. Theory, Culture & Society, 24(5), 27-46. Law, A. (2001). Near and far: Banal national identity and the press in Scotland. Media, Culture and Society, 23(3), 299-317. Lash, S. (1988). Discourse or figure? Postmodernism as a 'regime of signification'. Theory, Culture & Society, 5 (2), 311-336. Lazarus, N (1999). Nationalism and Cultural Practice in the Postcolonial World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lieberman, M.D., & Lin, J. (2009). You are where you edit: Locating Wikipedia contributors through editing histories. Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Retrieved from http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~jimmylin/publications/Lieberman_Lin_ICWSM200 9.pdf (May 2010). Litt, P. (1992) The Muses, the Masses and the Massey Commission. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Littlejohn, S.W. (2002). Theories of human communication. 7th edition. Belmont, CA: Wads worth/Thomson Learning. Lorimer, R.M., Wilson, D., C. (1988). Threads of Communication Technology in the Fabric of Canadian Life. In R. M. Lorimer & D.C. Wilson (Eds.), Communication Canada: Issues in Broadcasting and New Technologies (2-27). Toronto: Kagan & Woo Limited. Lubken, D. (2008). Remembering the Straw Man: The Travels and Adventures of Hypodermic. In D. W. Park & J. Pooley (Eds.), The History of Media and Communication Research. Contested Memories (19-42). New York: Peter Lang. 372
Luke, T. W. (1999). Simulated Sovereignty, Telematic Territoriality: The Political Economy of Cyberspace. In M. Featherstone & S. Lash (Eds.), Spaces of Culture. City, Nation, World (27-48). London: Sage Publications. Lutter, C, Reisenleitner, M. (2003). Introducing History (In)To Cultural Studies: Some Remarks on the German-Speaking Context. Cultural Studies, 16(5), 611-630. Lyotard, J. F. (1979/1984). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. G. Bennignton and B. Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. MacDougall, S. (2007). The All-Red Dream: Technological Nationalism and the Trans- Canada Telephone System. In N. Hillmer & A. Chapnick (Eds.) Canadas of the mind: the making and unmaking of Canadian nationalisms in the twentieth century (46-62). Montreal: McGill-Queen's Press. MacKenzie, D., Wajcman, J. (Eds.) (1985). The Social Shaping of Technology. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Macrosociology. (2002). Dictionary of the Social Sciences. Craig Calhoun, ed. Oxford University Press 2002. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. University of Calgary. 23 December 2010
Marvin, C. (1988). When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press. Marx, K. (1859). A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. In J. Donald & S. Hall (Eds.) Politics and Ideology (15-16). Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Marx, K., Engels, F. (1970). The German Ideology. Part One with Selections from Part 2 and 3 and Supplementary Texts. Ed. by Christopher John Arthur. Lawrence & Wishart Mattelart, A. (1996). The Invention of Communication. Trans. Susan Emanuel. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mattelart, A. (2002). An Archaeology of the Global Era: Constructing a Belief. Media, Culture & Society 24(5), 591-612. Mattelart, A., Mattelart, M. (1992). Rethinking Media Theory. Trans. James A. Cohen and Maria Urquidi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. McCarthy, T. (1976). Introduction. In J. Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (vii-xxiv). Trans. Thomas McCarhty. London: Heinmann Educational Books. McDowell, S. D., & Buchwald, C. C. (1997). Public interest groups and the Canadian information highway. Telecommunications Policy, 21(8), 709-719. McLuhan, M. (1962). The Gutenberg Galaxy. The Making of Typographic Man. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. McNaught, K. (1976). The Pelican History of Canada. Penguin Books. McNeill, W. (1986). Polyethnicity and National Unity in World History. Toronto: Toronto University Press. McNulty, J. (1988). Technology and Nation-Building in Canadian Broadcasting. In R. Lorimer & D. Wilson (Ed.) Communication Canada: Issues in Broadcasting and New Technologies (176-98). Toronto: Kagan & Woo Ltd. McPhail, T., McPhail, B. (1990). Communication: The Canadian Experience. Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman. McQuail, D. (1987). Functions of Communication: A Nonfunctionalist Overview. In Ch. R. Berger & S.H. Chaffee (Eds.) Handbook of Communication Science (327-349). Newbury Park, Beverly Hills, London, New Delhi: Sage Publications. 374
McQuail, D. (2000). Media Policy. Premature Obsequies?. In E. Tumber (Ed.) Media Power, Professionals and Policies (19-34). London and New York: Routledge. McRobbie, A. (1992). Post-Marxism and Cultural Studies: A Post-Script. In L. Grossberg, C. Nelson & P. A. Treichler (Eds.) Cultural Studies (719-730). New York, London: Routledge. Melucci, A. (1996). Challenging Codes. Collective Action in the Information Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mengin, F. (2004). CyberChina. Reshaping National Identities in the Age of Information. Palgrave Macmillan. Merrin, W. (2005). Baudrillard and the media: a critical introduction. Revised edition. Polity Press. Metcalfe, J. (2000). Intuition. In Encyclopedia of Psychology (363-364), vol. 4. American Psychological Association, Oxford University Press. Meyrowitz, J. (1985). No Sense of Place. The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press Milfull, J. (2007). The Rebirth of an Oxymoron: The Genesis and Functions of 'Constitutional Patriotism'. Debate: The Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 15(1), 107-114. Miller, B. (2004). Spaces of Mobilization: Transnational Social Movements. In C. Barnett & M. Low (Eds.) Spaces of Democracy (223-46). London: Sage Publications. Miller, G., Sinclair, G., Sutherland, D., Zilber, J. (1999). Regulation of the Internet. A Technological Perspective. Report commissioned by Industry Canada. Retrieved from http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst.nsf/vwapj/005082_e.pdf/ $FILE/005082_e.pdf (November 2009). Mitchell, D (1988). Culture as Political Discourse in Canada. In R. Lorimer & D. C. Wilson (Eds) Communication Canada: Issues in Broadcasting and New Technologies (157-174). Toronto: Kagan & Woo Ltd. Mitchell, D. (2003).The Alberta SuperNet Research Alliance. Canadian Journal of Communication, 28(2). Retrieved from http://cjc- online.ca/index.php/journal/article/viewArticle/1361/1431 (November 2009). Mitra, A. (1997). Virtual Commonality: Looking for India on the Internet. In S. Jones (Ed.), Virtual Culture: Identity and Communication in Cyberspace (55-79). London: Sage Publications. Morley, D. (1980). The Nationwide Audience. Structure and Decoding. London: British Film Institute. Morley, D. (2000). Home Territories: Media, Mobility, and Identity. London and New York: Routledge. Morley, D. (2006). Globalisation and Cultural Imperialism Reconsidered. Old Questions in New Guises. In J. Curran & D. Morley (Eds.), Media and Cultural Theory (30- 43). London and New York: Routledge. Morley, D., Robins, K. (1995). Spaces of Identity. Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries. London and New York: Routledge Morley, D., Chen, H.K. (Eds.) (1996). Stuart Hall: critical dialogues in cultural studies. Routledge Morley, D., Robins, K. (Eds.) (2001). British Cultural Studies. Geography, Nationality, and Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press Morris, M. (2001). Rethinking the Communicative Turn. Adorno, Habermas and the Problem of Communicative Freedom. State University of New York Press. Mosco, V. (2001). Brand New World? Globalization, Cyberspace and the Politics of Convergence. Paper presented at the Panamerican Colloquim: Cultural Industries and Dialogue between Civilizations in Americas, September 17-19, 2001 and keynote address at the Conference 2001 Bugs: Globalism and Pluralism, September 19-21, 2001, Montreal. Mosco, V. (2005). The Digital Sublime. Myth, Power and Cyberspace. Cambridge, London: MIT Press. Mouffe, C. (1993). The Return of the Political. London, New York: Verso. Mumby, D.K. (1997). Modernism, Postmodernism and Communication Studies: A Rereading of an Ongoing Debate. Communication Theory, 7(1), 1-28. Munch, R. (1986). The Difficult Dialogue. Marxism and Nationalism. London: Zed Books Ltd. 376
Nakamura, L. (2002). Cybertypes: race, ethnicity, and identity on the Internet. New York: Routledge. Negroponte, N. (1996).The Digital Absence of Localism. Wired, November 1, 1996, retrieved from http://archives.obs-us.com/obs/english/books/nn/bd41196.htm (November 2010). Negroponte, N. (1998). Beyond Digital. Wired 6(12). Retrieved from http://web.media.mit.edu/~nicholas/Wired/WIRED6-12.html (October 2007) Nielsen, G., Jackson J.D. (1991). Cultural Studies, a Sociological Poetics: Institutions of the Canadian Imaginary. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 28(2), 279-298. Nordenstreng, K. (1977). European Communication Theory: Review and Commentary. In D. Brent Rubens (Ed.), Communication Yearbook 1 (73-78). New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books. Norkus, L. (2004). Max Weber on Nations and Nationalism: Political Economy before Political Sociology. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 29(3), 389-418. Norman,W. (2006). Negotiating Nationalism. Nation-Building, Federalism, and Secession in the Multinational State. Oxford University Press. Ohmae, K. (1990). The Borderless World: power and strategy in the interlinked economy. London: HarperCollins. Ozkirimli, U. (2003).The Nation as an Artichoke? A Critique of Ethnosymbolist Interpretations of Nationalism. Nations and Nationalism, 9(3), 339-355. Ozkirimli, U. (2005). Contemporary Debates on Nationalism. A Critical Engagement. Palgrave Macmillan. Palfrey, G., Gasser, U. (2008). Born Digital. Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives. New York: Basic Books. Palmer, C. (1998). From Theory to Practice. Experiencing the Nation in Everyday Life. Journal of Material Culture, 3(2), 175-199. Pasquali, F. (2001). Imagining the Web: the Social Construction of the Internet in Italy. Modem Italy, 6(2), 181-193. Park, D.W., Pooley, J. (Eds.) (2008). 77?^ History of Media and Communication Research. Contested Memories. New York: Peter Lang Pew Internet & American Life Project (2005). Internet: The Mainstreaming of Online Life. Retrieved from http://pewinternet.Org/~/media//Files/Reports/2005/Internet_Status_2005.pdf.pdf (October 2010). Plamenatz, J. (1970). Ideology. London: Pall Mall Press Ltd. Pillai, P. (1992). Rereading Stuart Hall's Encoding/ Decoding Model. Communication Theory, 2(3), 221-233. Pinch, T. J., Bijker, W. E. (1987). The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other. In W. Bijker, T. P. Hughes & T. Pinch (Eds.), The Social Construction of Technological Systems. New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (17-50). Cambridge, London: The MIT Press. Pinson, K. (1935). A Bibliographical Introduction to Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Pollner, M. (1987). Mundane Reason: Reality in Everyday and Sociological Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pooley, J. (2008). The New History of Mass Communication Research. In D. W. Park and J. Pooley (Eds.), The History of Media and Communication Research. Contested Memories (43-69). New York: Peter Lang. Popper, K. (1966). The Open Society and Its Enemies. The Spell of Plato. Vol. I, London & Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul Poster, M. (1990). The Mode of Information. Poststructuralism and Social Context. Cambridge: Polity Press Poster, M. (2001). Introduction. In M. Poster (Ed.), Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings (1-12). 2nd edition. Stanford: Stanford University Press Poster, M. (2006). Information Please. Culture and Politics in the Age of Digital Machines. Durham and London: Duke University Press Potter, J. (1996). Representing Reality: Discourse, Rhetoric and Social Construction. London: Sage. Potter, J., Edwards, D., Wetherell, M. (1993). A Model of Discourse in Action. American Behavioral Scientist, 36(3), 383-401. 378
Potter, J., Wetherell, M., Gill, R., Edwards, R. (1990). Discourse: Noun, Verb or Social Practice?. Philosophical Psychology, 3(2), 205-217. Price, M.E. (2002). Media and Sovereignty. The Global Information Revolution and Its Challenges to State Power. Cambridge, London: MIT Press Purcell, W.M. (1992). Are There so Few Communication Theories?. Communication Monographs, 59, 95-97. Raboy, M. (1992a). Canadian Broadcasting, Canadian Nationhood: Two Concepts, Two Solitudes, and Great Expectations. In H. Holmes. & D. Taras (Eds.), Seeing Ourselves. Media Power and Policy in Canada (156-173). Toronto: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Canada Ltd. Raboy, Marc. (1992b). Missed opportunities: The story of Canada's broadcasting policy. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press. Raboy, M. (1994). The Role of the Public in Broadcasting Policy-Making and Regulation: Lesson for Europe from Canada. European Journal of Communication, 9(1), 5-23. Raboy, M. (1995). The Role of Public Consultation in Shaping the Canadian Broadcasting System. Canadian Journal of Political Science/ Revue canadienne de science politique, 28(3), 455-477. Raboy, M. (1996). Public Television. In M. Dorland (Ed.), The Cultural Industries in Canada. Problems, Policies and Prospects (178-202). Toronto: James Lorimer & Company Publishers. Radin, C. (1993). 20 million drive the information highway; It's time to open the Internet to every computer user, planners say. The Gazette, January 2, 1993, p. C3. Rantanen, T. (2005). The Media and Globalization. London: Sage Publications. Reddick, A. (1995). The Information Highway: Will Some Canadians Be Left on the Side of the Road? Ottawa: Public Interest Advocacy Centre. Rens, J.G. (2001). The invisible empire: a history of the telecommunications industry in Canada. Trans. Kathe Roth, Volume 1. Montreal: McGill-Queen's Press. Rideout V. (2002). Canadians connected and unplugged: Public access to the internet and the digital divide. In Michael P. McCauley, Eric E. Peterson, B. Lee Artz & 379
DeeDee Halleck (Eds.), Public Broadcasting and the Public Interest (192-204). M.E. Sharpe. Rideout, V. (2003). Continentalizing Canadian Telecommunications: The Politics of Regulatory Reform. Montreal: McQill-Queen's Press. Riessman, C. K. (2002). Analysis of personal narratives. In J. F. Gubrium & J. A. Holstein (Eds), Handbook of Interview Research (695-710). London: Sage Publications. Rheingold, H. (2000a). The Virtual Community. Homsteading the Electronic Frontier. MIT Press. Rheingold, H. (2000b). Tools for Thought. MIT Press. Retrieved from http://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/ (February 2009). Robertson, R. (1990). Mapping the global conditions: Globalization as the central Concept. Theory, Culture & Society, 7 (2-3), 15-30. Robertson, R. (1992). Globalization. Social Theory and Global Culture. Sage. Rogers, E. M., & Valente, T. W. (1993). A history of information theory in communication research. In J. R. Schement & B. D. Ruben (Eds.), Between communication and information. Information and behavior (35-56). Volume four. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Rojek, C. (2003). Stuart Hall. Cambridge: Polity Press. Rojek, C. (2007). Cultural Studies. Cambridge: Polity Press. Rosamond, B. (1999). Discourses of Globalization and the Social Construction of European Identities. Journal of European Public Policy, 6(4), 652-668. Rosenau, J. (1997). Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier: Exploring Governance in a Turbulent World. Cambridge University Press Roth, L. (1998). The Delicate Acts of 'Colour Balancing': Multiculturalism and Canadian Television Broadcasting Policies and Practices. Canadian Journal of Communication 23(4), retrieved from http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/ article/viewArticle/1061/967 (October 1996). Rugman, A., D'Cruz, J. (1994). A Theory of Business Networks. In L.Eden (Ed), Multinationals in North America (103-116). Ottawa: Ministry of Supply and Services Canada. 380
Sassen, S. (2000). Digital Networks and the State. Some Governance Questions. Theory, Culture and Society, 17(4), 19-33. Schiller, D. (1999). Digital Capitalism. Networking the Global Market System. Cambridge & London: The MIT Press. Schlesinger, P. (1991). Media, State and Nation. Political Violence and Collective Identities. London, Newbury Park, New Delhi: Sage Publications Schlesinger, P. (2007). A Cosmopolitan Temptation. European Journal of Communication, 22(4), 413-426. Schlesinger, P. (2008). Cosmopolitan temptations, communicative spaces and the European Union. In D. Hesmondhalgh & J. Toynbee (Eds.), The Media and Social Theory (75-92). London and New York: Routledge. Scholte, J. A. (1993). International Relations of Social Change. Buckingham: Open University Press. Scholte, J. (2005). Globalization. A Critical Reader. 2nd edition, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Schostak, J. F. (2005). Interviewing and Representation in Qualitative Research Projects. Berkshire: McGrawHill Education. Schramm, W. (1964). Mass Media and National Development: The Role of Information in the Developing Countries. Stanford University Press Schramm, W. (1997). The Beginnings of Communication Study in America. A Personal Memoir. Edited by Steven H. Chaffee and Everett M. Rogers. Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi: Sage Publications. Scott, A.J. (1997). The Cultural Economy of Cities. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 21(2), 323-339. Semin, G. R., & Gergen, K. J. (1990). Everyday Understanding. Social and Scientific Implications. London: Sage Publications. Severin, W.J., Tankard, J.W. Jr. (1988). Communication Theories. Origins, Methods, Uses. 2nd Edition. New York and London: Langman. Shade, L.R. (2008). Focus on the Field. A Look at the Historiography and Role of Media in Communication Studies. In J. Greenberg & C. Elliott (Eds.) Communication in Question. Compelling Perspectives on Controversial Issues in Communication Studies (335-343 ). Thompson Nelson. Shapiro, M. J. (1981). Language and Political Understanding. The Politics of Discursive Practices. New Haven, London: Yale University Press. Shapiro, M. J. (1999). The Ethics of Encounter: Unreading, Unmapping the Imperialism. In D. Campbell & M. J. Shapiro (Eds.), Moral Spaces. Rethinking Ethics and World Politics (57-90). Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press. Shapiro, M. J. (2004). Methods and Nations. Cultural Governance and the Indigenous Subject. New York & London: Routledge. Shklovski, I., Struthers, D. (2010). Of States and Borders on the Internet: The role of domain name extensions in expressions of nationalism online. Paper presented at the "Internet, Politics, Policy 2010: An Impact Assessment", Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, (16-17 September 2010), retrieved from http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/ipp2010/programme/77 (January 2011). Silverstone, R. (ed.) (2005). Media, Technology and Everyday Life in Europe. From Information to Communication. Hants: Ashgate. Silverstone, R., Morley, D., Dahlberg, A. & Livingstone, A. (1989). Families, technologies and consumption: The household and information and communication technologies. Uxbridge, Middlesex: CRIT. Sirois, C, & Forget, C.E. (1995). The Medium and the Muse. Culture, Telecommunications and the Information Highway. Quebec, QB: Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP). Skeggs, B. (2004). Class, Self, Culture. New York, NY: Routledge. Slack, J. D., & Allor, M. (1983). The Political and Epistemological Constituents of Critical Communication Research. The Journal of Communication, 35(3), 208- 218. Smith, A. D. (1971). Theories of Nationalism. London: Duckworth. Smith A.D. (1986). The Ethnic Origin of Nations. Blackwell. Smith, A. D. (1990). Towards a Global Culture? Theory, Culture & Society 7(2), 171- 191. Smith, A.D. (1991). National Identity. Penguin Group. Smith, A.D. (1992a). Nationalism and the Historians. InternationalJournal of Comparative Sociology, 55(1-2), 58-80. Smith, A.D. (1992b). Introduction: Ethnicity and Nationalism. InternationalJournal of Comparative Sociology, 33(1-2), 1-4. Smith, A.D. (1995). Gastronomy or Geology? The Role of Nationalism in the Reconstruction of Nations. Nations and Nationalism, 1(1), 3-23. Smith, A.D. (1998). Nationalism and Modernism. A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism. London and New York: Routledge. Smith, A. D. (2000). The "Sacred' Dimension of Nationalism. Millennium - Journal of International Studies, 29(3), 791-814. Smith, A.D. (2007). Nations in Decline? The Erosion and Persistence of Modern National Identities. In M. Young, E. Zuelow & A. Sturm (Eds.), Nationalism in a Global Era. The Persistence of Nations (17-32). London & NY: Routledge. Smith, A.D. (2008). The Shining Landscapes of'Nationalism'. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 8(2), 317-330. Smith, A.D., Breuilly, J., Grant, S.M., Roshawald, A. (2008). Fourth Nations and Nationalism Debate on Aviel Roshwald's The Endurance of Nationalism. Nations and Nationalism, 14(4), 637-663. Smythe, D. (1981). Dependency Road: Communications, Capitalism, Consciousness in Canada. Norwood, New Jersey: Alex Publishing Corporation. Sparks, C. (1989). Experience, Ideology and Articulation: Stuart Hall and the Development of Culture. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 13(2), 79-87. Sparks, C. (1996). Stuart Hall, Cultural Studies and Marxism. In S. Hall, D. Morley & K.H. Chen (Eds.), Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (71-101). London: Routledge. Sparks, C. (2007). What's Wrong With Globalization?. Global Media and Communication, 3(2), 133-155. Speier.M. (1971). The everyday world of the child. In J. Douglas (Ed.), Understanding Everyday Life (188-218). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Stake, R. (2005). Qualitative Case Studies. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (433-66). Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi: Sage Publications. Standage, T.(1998). The Victorian Internet. Walker & Company. Statistics Canada (2008). Canadian internet use survey. The Daily, June 12, Retrieved from http://wvvrw.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/080612/dq080612b-eng.htm (March 2010). Statistics Canada (2010). Canadian internet use survey. The Daily, May 10, Retrieved from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/100510/dq 100510a-eng.htm (March 2010). Steinberg, P. E., Mcdowell, S. D. (2003).Mutiny on the bandwidth: the semiotics of statehood in the internet domain name registries of Pitcairn Island and Niue. New Media Society, 5(1), 47-67. Stephenson, N. (1992). Snowcrash. New York: Bantam Books. Stuart, R. (2006). Marxism and National Identity. Socialism, Nationalism, and National Socialism during the French Fin de Siecle. State University of New York Press Suzuki, D. (1993). Understanding media: What's the message?: We are about to be inundated by a new wave of fibre optic-based technology. The Windsor Star, August 3, 1993, p. A7 Szporluk, R. (1988). Communism and Nationalism. Karl Marx versus Friedrich List. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Taylor, C. (2002). Modern Social Imaginaries. Public Culture, 14(1), 91-124. "techie, n." The Concise Oxford English Dictionary, Twelfth edition . Ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press, 2008. University of Calgary, 19 November 2010,
Thompson, J. B. (1990). Ideology and Modern Culture. Critical Social Theory in the Era of Mass Communication. Polity Press. Trausch, S. (1993). And you thought push-button phones were high-tech. The Gazette, June 21, 1993, p. B3. Therborn, G. (1980). The Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology. Verso. Threadgold, T. (2003). Cultural Studies, Critical Theory and Critical Discourse Analysis: Histories, Remembering and Futures. Unguistik Online, 14(2), Retrieved from http://v^ww.linguistik-online.de/14_03/threadgold.html (May 2009). Tomlinson, J. (1999). Globalization and Culture. University of Chicago Press. Tuohy, C.J. (1992). Policy and Politics in Canada. Institutionalized Ambivalence. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the Screen. Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster. Tynes, R. (2007). Nation-building and the diaspora on Leonenet: a case of Sierra Leone in cyberspace. New Media & Society, 9(3), 497-518. Underhill, C, Ladds, C. (2007). Connecting with Canadians: Assessing the Use of Government On-Line. Connectedness Series, Statistics Canada, Catalogue no. 56F0004MIE, no. 15. van den Bossche, G. (2003). Is there Nationalism after Ernest Gellner? An Exploration of Methodological Choices. Nations and Nationalism, 9(4), 491-509. Van Dijck, J., Nieborg, D. (2009). Wikinomics and its discontents: a critical analysis of Web 2.0 business manifestos. New Media & Society, 11(5), 855-874. Van Dijk, T. A. (2003). Critical Discourse Analysis. In D. Schffrin, D. Tannen & H. Hamilton (Eds.) The Handbook of Discourse Analysis (352-71). Maiden: Wiley- Blackwell. Van Dijk, T. A. (2005). Racism and Discourse in Spain and Latin America. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Van Dijk, T. (2006a).Discourse, Context and Cognition. Discourse Studies, 8(1), 159- 177. Van Dijk, T. (2006b). Discourse and Manipulation. Discourse & Society, 17(3), 359-383. Van Dijk, T. (2009). Critical Discourse Studies: A Sociocognitive Approach. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (62-85). London: Sage. Vipond, M. (1989). The Mass Media in Canada. Toronto: James Lorimer & Company Publishers. Zizek, S. (1989). The Sublime Object of Ideology. London, New York: Verso. Young, D. (2003).Discourses on Communication Technologies in Canadian and European Broadcasting Policy Debates. European Journal of Communication, 18(2), 209-240. Waldman, D. (1977). Critical Theory and Film: Adomo and the 'Culture Industry' Revisited. New German Critique, 12, 39-60. Walker, R.B.J. (2010). Democratic Theory and the Present/Absent International. Ethics & Global Politics, 5(1), 21-36. Webster, F. (2000). Information, Capitalism and Uncertainty. Information, Communication & Society, 5(1), 69-90. Wellman, B., Haythornthwaite, C. (Eds.) (2002). The Internet in Everyday Life. Blackwell Publishing. Whitaker, Mark P. (2004). Tamilnet.com: Some Reflections on Popular Anthropology, Nationalism, and the Internet. Anthropological Quarterly, 77(3), 469-498. Wickham, G., Kendall, G. (2007). Critical Discourse Analysis, Description, Explanation, Causes: Foucault's Inspiration Versus Weber's Perspiration. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 8(2), art. 4, available online at http://www.qualitative- research.net (June 2007). Widdowson, H.G. (2000). On the limitations of linguistics applied. Applied Linguistics, 21(1), 3-25. Wiener, N. (1965). Cybernetics or control and communication in the animal and the machine: Or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. MIT Press, 2nd edition Wiener, N. (1988). The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society. Da Capo Press, 2nd edition. 386
Wiley, S.B.C. (2004). Rethinking Nationality in the Context of Globalization. Communication Theory, 14(1), 78-96. Williams, C. (1994). Called unto Liberty. On Language and Nationalism. Clevedon: Channel View Publications. Williams, M. (2002). Generalization in Interpretive Research. In T. May (Ed.), Qualitative Research in Action (131-41). London: Sage Publications. Williams, R. (1997). The Social Shaping of Information and Communications Technologies. In H. Kubicek, W. Dutton & R. Williams (Eds.), The Social Shaping of Information Superhighways (299-338). Frankfurt: Campus. Wilson, K.G. (1996). Canada's New Regulatory Framework. Telecommunications Policy, 20(8), 607-621. Wimmer, A., Glick Schiller, N. (2002). Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-State Building, Migration and the Social Sciences. Global Networks, 2(4), 301-334. Winner, L. (1985). Do Artifacts Have Politics?. In D. MacKenzie & Judy Wajcman (Eds.) The Social Shaping of Technology (pp. 26-38). Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Winseck, D. (1999). Back to the Future: Telecommunications, Online Information Services and Convergence from 1840-1910. Media History, 5(2), 137-157. Witzel, Andreas & Mey, Gunter (2004). "I am NOT Opposed to Quantification or Formalization or Modeling, But Do Not Want to Pursue Quantitative Methods That Are Not Commensurate With the Research Phenomena Addressed." Aaron Cicourel in Conversation With Andreas Witzel and Gunter Mey [106 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung /Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 5(3), Art. 41, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0403412. Wodak, R., Meyer, M. (2009). Critical Discourse Analysis: History, Agenda, Theory and Methodology. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (1-33). 2nd edition. London: Sage Publications. . "would modal v." The Concise Oxford English Dictionary, Twelfth edition. Ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. University of Calgary. 2 November 2010 387
APPENDIX A: LIST OF SEARCH KEYWORDS AND NEWSPAPER ARTICLES
INCLUDED IN THE ANALYSIS SAMPLE
1994 Government Vision The articles included here have been selected after a search in Canadian Newsstand for 1993-1994 using the following terms: • 3 documents found for: ("Building Canada's Information and Communications Infrastructure") AND PDN(> 1/1/1994) AND PDN(<12/31/1994) • 53 documents found for: ("Canada's Information Highway") AND PDN(>1/1/1994) AND PDN(< 12/31/1994) • 181 documents found for: ("Information Highway") AND PDN(>1/1/1993) AND PDN(<12/31/1993) • 63 documents found for: ("Industry Canada") AND (information) AND PDN(>1/1/1993) AND PDN(<12/31/1994) • 12 documents found for: ("Industry Canada") AND (internet) AND PDN(>1/1/1993) AND PDN(<12/31/1994)
Ite m Source Date Title Pg Author Words 1 Toronto Star Sep 19, More training, research only way to David Crane 557 G4 1993 secure future J i 2 Toronto Star Sep 28, Technology group calls for political Dana Flavelle 327 Dl 1993 support Toronto Star Oct 24, Paving the way for an electronic Dana Flavelle 1146 G 1 1993 highway 4 Financial Post Oct 28, PRIORITY URGED ON Jonathan 281 6 1993. 'INFORMATION HIGHWAY': Chevreau Stentor plea to Liberals; The Hamilton Oct 28, Tele-data firm hypes electronic B2 Jim Bronskill 431 Spectator 1993 highway; The Ottawa Oct 28, Ottawa a high-tech highway hotbed El AlanaKainz 535 Citizen 1993 The Ottawa Oct 28, Phone group urges action on E I Alana Kainz 573 Citizen 1993 information highway The Vancouver Oct 28, Superhighway role urged for Ottawa D7 Ian Austen 418 Sun 1993 Toronto Star Oct 28, Government help sought for D 10 Dana Flavelle 318 389
JT993 information highway "| __ — 10 The Hamilton Nov 18, Information highway on the road E.2 Jim Bronskill 407 Spectator 1993. 11 The Ottawa 1 Nov 18, Information highways underway 1 C 1 Alana Kainz 585 Citizen 1993 C.I 12 The Ottawa [Nov 18, OCRInet removes speed limits on c 1 Alana Kainz 727 Citizen 'l993. high-tech information highway +- - 13 The Ottawa | Nov 18, Ottawa makes tracks on informatior A 1 Alana Kainz 667 Citizen [1993 highway 14 The Ottawa | Nov 27, Add electronic highways to job plan , ,G.l Alana Kainz 487 Citizen 1993 group urges; 4 _, 15 The Ottawa Jan 13, Chretien new champ of high-tech |D.6 Alana Kainz 474 Citizen 1994 highway? _ L [ 16 The Globe and May 13, INFORMATION HIGHWAY C20 716 Mail. 1994 Canadian info highway advisory committee has work cut out for it _!_ J The Globe and May 13, INFORMATION HIGHWAY C9 677 Mail 1994 PRIVACY LAWS Copyright laws need updating in electronic world - 1— .8 The Ottawa Dec 6, | Information highway gets a boost E.I Alana Kainz 744 Citizen 1994 1— 19 The Gazette Dec 7, 1 Federal government to spend $ 132 Alana Kainz 536 1994. I million on information highway; Money to go toward developing C2 applications and to link all 16,500 schools and 3,400 libraries across 1 Canada 20 Kingston Whig - Dec 8, Updates 475 Standard 1994
17 1995 CRTC Competition Report The articles included here have been selected after a search in Canadian Newsstand for 1995-1996 using the following terms: • 7 documents found for: ("Competition and Culture on Canada's Information Highway") AND PDN(>1/1/1995) AND PDN(<1/1/1996) • 195 documents found for: (CRTC) AND ("information highway") AND PDN(> 1/1/1995) AND PDN(<1/1/1996)
Item Source Date Title Pg Author Words 390
Toronto Star Oct 22, I We've got 3 months to shape data B3 Robert Brehl 467 1994 road CRTC calls for written submissions by Jan. 16
Toronto Star Dec 01, CRTC hearings set on future cable E.3 i Robert Brehl 235 1994 rules Financial Post I Feb 4, Canadian content regulations not 21 I Ashley Geddes 405 1995 | needed, Telus tells CRTC The Globe and , Feb 10, Canadian content on info highway B.7 Lawrence 440 Mail I 1995 tops CRTC agenda Official sheds Surtees light on inquiry issue Calgary Herald Feb 28, f Consumer demand to rule A.4 James Pratt 657 1995 information highway Calgary Herald | Mar 4, CRTC considers rules for E.5 Ian Austen 716 1995 information highway The Spectator Mar 7, Help public get on info highway, |c.8 '185 1995 CRTC told
Edmonton Mar 7, Info highway's base 'flawed'; Expert B6 Ian Austen 311 Journal 1995 says consumer interests forgotten in firms' turf war Financial Post i Mar 7, CRTC takes heat as highway probe 10 JillVardy 499 1995 begins
10 The Gazette f Mar 1 Regulating Canadian content on the J.4 Cairn 965 1995 information highway; It promises to I MacGregor be as bureaucratic as I-Way itself L _ 11 Kingston Whig - Mar 13, Who is worrying about content on 6 Dave Hallett 291 Standard 1995 the Internet7 i The Gazette i Mar 14, Protect Canadian content B 2 462 ! 1995 13 Times - Colonist Mar 21, VIEWPOINT - Ensuring choices Brian Canfield 642 1995 along the information highway J f Calgary Herald Apr 1, Telus fight Canadian content rules A.13 i Ron Chalmers 239 1995 15 The Ottawa Apr 2, INFORMATION HIGHWAY: j D.9 Ian Austen 745 Citizen 1995 Costly high-tech road has yet to pave way for consumer needs 16 Financial Post Apr 4. Canadians are ready for infobahn 14 382 1995 competition now 17 The Gazette May 1 CRTC should make sure Canadian B 3 Michael 794 1995 content isn't run off info highway McCabe
18 The Ottawa May 19, Info highway report guide to the C.8 Rob Carrick. 465 Citizen 1995 future 391
19 Financial Post May 20, CRTC stalls telecoms' broadcasting 1 Jill Vardy 734 1995 debut 20 The Ottawa May 20, INFORMATION HIGHWAY: Make D.l Alana Kainz 855 Citizen 1995 service affordable, CRTC says; Price breaks urged for hospitals and schools 21 Toronto Star May 20, CRTC adrift in '50s on 500 channels E.2 Antonia 679 1995 Zerbisias 22 The Gazette May 23, CRTC goes slow on competition in A.l Ian Austen 615 1995 cable TV; Phone companies must wait, it says, to protect cable operators 23 The Province May 23, Gov't subsidies eyed A.39 Alana Kainz 305 1995. 24 The Ottawa May 25, Slow going on highway A 10 427 "1 Citizen 1995 25 The Globe and May 26, Too soon to applaud CRTC's i B.2 , Terence 659 Mail 1995 conversion Corcoran
26 The Ottawa May 27, Confusing signals on info highway E.2 Ian Austen 692 Citizen 1995 27 Toronto Star May 29, Competition on the info highway i A. 18 382 1995 28 The Globe and Nov 7, CRTC clings to regulatory power B.22 Terence 733 Mail. 1995 Corcoran
1995 IHAC Report, 1996 Government Response and 1997 IHAC Report The articles included here have been selected after a search in Canadian Newsstand for 1993-1998 using the following terms: • 308 documents found for: ("information highway advisory council") AND PDN(>1/1/1993) • 3 documents found for: ("Connection, Community, Content") • 18 documents found for: (IHAC) AND (report) AND PDN(>1/1/1994) AND PDN(<1/1/1998) • 6 documents found for: ("Preparing Canada for a Digital World") AND PDN(> 1/1/1996) AND PDN(< 1/1/2000) • 7 documents found for: ("Building the information society : moving Canada into the 21st century") 392
Item Source Date Title Pg Author Words 1 The Ottawa Jan 29, Drive to the future; The information A.l Alana Kainz 922 Citizen 1994. highway will change the way we live 2 The Spectator Mar 17, At the wheel Info highway advisor is D.7 Jim Bronskill 597 1994. to work in secret o j The Vancouver Mar 17, Federal advisers on information D.7 Ian Austen 601 Sun 1994 highway taking a secret route 4 The Ottawa Mar 19, Don't hide the highway map B.6 312 Citizen. 1994 5 Toronto Star Apr 10, Ottawa's lagging on information D.4 David Crane 762 1994. highway issue , 6 Toronto Star Apr 12, We deserve more on cultural policy E.2 David Crane 616 1994 7 The Ottawa Apr 13, INFORMATION HIGHWAY: E.3 Alana Kainz 482 Citizen 1994 Government gets 2,000 requests for 25 seats on advisory council 8 The Spectator Apr 20, Shut out from info highway arts A.6 303 1994 sector besieges Manley; [Final Edition] - — 9 The Globe and Apr 21, Artists decry lack of voice on council E.3 349 Mail 1994 10 Calgary Herald May 6, Creative culture sector cut off on C.6 Jamie Portman, 846 1994 "info' highway; [Final Edition] Southam News 11 The Windsor May 7, Info-highway study keys on culture A. 18 412 Star 1994 12 The Globe and May 13, INFORMATION HIGHWAY C.20 716 Mail 1994 Canadian info highway advisory committee has work cut out for it 13 The Vancouver Aug 17, Ensure small towns, rural areas aren't D.3 203 Sun 1994. left eating dust, study urges; - 14 Edmonton Aug 17, NOT ON HIGHWAY A.3 102 Journal 1994 15 Toronto Star Aug 17, Study urges wide access to data road E 3 Robert Brehl 487 1994 Network may miss remote areas authors warn .6 Toronto Star. Oct 15, Ottawa seeks advice about privacy C 3 Robert Brehl 646 1994 Information highway raises new questions, paper says; 17 The Gazette Feb 2, Steering down the information B 3 David Johnston 329 1995 highway; [FINAL Edition] 18 The Globe and Apr 6, Hands off the Internet A.26 509 393
Mail 1995 19 Toronto Star Ml, Data highway must get green light; B.3 David Crane 514 1995 [Final Edition] 20 Toronto Star Aug 20, Public interest should help map info D.2 David Crane 852 1995 highway; [Final Edition] 21 Toronto Star Aug 31, Two tiers feared on info highway B.l Robert Brehl 615 1995 Subsidies seen as 'food stamps'; [Final Edition] 22 Toronto Star Aug 30, Access called the key to information A.l Robert Brehl 845 1995 highway Canadians have right to service, special panel says; [Final Edition] 23 Toronto Star Aug 30, CLC leader breaks ranks on report C.l Bob Brehl 369 1995 Workers deserve more, Parrot says; [Final Edition] h24- Toronto Star Aug 30, Canada's fast lane Canadian content C.l Robert Brehl 1300 1995 must get its own reserved routes on ' the information highway, or the phone and cable companies might swamp us with American stuff, according to a task force report to federal cabinet; [Final Edition] 25 Financial Post Sep 2, Cable, TV may have to support info 4 Philip DeMont. 449 1995 highway 26 Toronto Star Sep 12, Help protect poor on info highway, C.3 Robert Brehl 310 1995 new report urges
1 L - 27 Financial Post Sep 23, WAITING FOR THE INFO 9 Peter Morton 655 1995 HIGHWAY: Communications industry report urges Ottawa to hurry up, 28 Financial Post Sep 28, Ottawa told not to allow writeoffs 4 Peter Morton 215 1995 on Internet ads 29 Toronto Star Sep 28, Censorship and the Net Does the 1 J.l K.K. Campbell 3040 1995 state belong in the hard drives of the nation?; [Final Edition] 30 The Ottawa Sep 28, INFORMATION HIGHWAY- D 10 Alana Kainz 1034 Citizen 1995 Advisory report leaves uncharted roads Kingston Whig - , Sep 28, Panel puts business on line Letting 20 Vic Parsons 395 Standard 1995 business lead the way is best for Canada, council says, [Final Edition] The Globe and Sep 28, Competition on information highway B4 Lawrence 536 Mail 1995 urged Report by Ottawa-appointed Surtess panel also calls for preservation of Canada's distinct public broadcasting system 394
33 The Ottawa Sep 28, Hitch on highway; [FINAL Edition] A.14 438 Citizen 1995 34 The Spectator Sep 28, Get moving on high-tech highway D.I2 Vic Parsons. 466 1995 blue-ribbon advisory panel urges; [Final Edition] 35 Toronto Star Sep 28, In formation-way report falls short, CIO Dana Flavelle 504 1995 critics contend Measures to protect Canadian culture called inadequate; [Final Edition] 36 The Spectator Sep 27, Sorting out the highway 'haves'and C.8. Vic Parsons. ^94 1995 'have-nots'; [Final Edition] 37 The Globe and Sep 30, Arts takes the off-ramp on info C.7 H.J. Kirchhoff 887 Mail 1995 highway report Lack of Cancon clout, copyright resolution concerns arts group 38 The Globe and Sep 30, Info highway needs foreign capital B2 Terence 785 Mail 1995 Corcoran 39 Toronto Star Oct 2, Info highway must stay Canadian, A.l Judy Stoffman 322 ^995 group says; 40 The Gazette ^Oct 10, Charting a course; [FINAL Edition] B.2 ^369 1995 41 The Record Oct 11, The race is on Government A.9 Hugh Lewis. 658 1995 restrictions block progress on the information highway; [Final Edition] 42 The Globe and Oct 18, The council wore blinkers A. 15 Michael Valpy 655 Mail 1995 43 Toronto Star May 23, Data road rules on way Ottawa to D.3 Robert Brehl 474 1996 outline promise of access to info highway 44 Calgary Herald May 24, Ottawa unveils plans for information C 11 Eric 435 1996 highway Beauchesne 45 Kingston Whig - May 30, Government promises 'affordable 18 Eric 183 Standard 1996 access' Beauchesne 46 The Vancouver Jan 18, See what the boys in the boardroom | H 3 John 854 Sun. 1997 will have MacLachlan ----- 1 Gray 47 Financial Post Apr 05, Ottawa told to promote Canadian 10 Jill Vardy 471 1997 content on Internet 48 The Ottawa Apr 5, Internet group wants ban on illegal E 2 Joanne 644 Citizen 1997 material. Government urged to Chianello enforce fraud, obscenity laws on Net 49 The Vancouver Apr 12, Right turns on the I-way H.3 John 887 Sun 1997 MacLachlan Gray 50 The Vancouver Sep 11, Internet quota won't work, feds told. D.l Peter Wilson 967 395
Sun 1997. A $50-million fund urged for distinctly Canadian multimedia production 51 Sault Star Nov 4, More Canadian Internet content A.5 282 1997 needed: Copps 52 Financial Post Nov 29, Manley convenes high-tech heads for 6 Jill Vardy 307 1997 'wired' summit
2001 NBTF Report The articles included here have been selected after a search in Canadian Newsstand for 1999-2002 using the following terms: • 99 documents found for: ("National Broadband Task Force") AND PDN(> 1/1/1999) AND PDN(<12/31/2002) • 12 documents found for: ("The New National Dream") AND (broadband) AND PDN(> 1/1/1999) AND PDN(< 12/31/2002)
Item Source Date Title Pg Author Words 1 National Post Jan 12, Tobin sees national high-speed C.6 ' Alan Toulin. 544 2001 Internet service as industry's cornerstone: Task force to guide government in setting policy National Post Jan 13, Dot-com barriers, broadband dreams D. 11 i Terence 860 2001 Corcoran Sudbury Star Jan 15, Feds vow to press on with Internet A.7 iKathrynMay 590 2001 initiative Daily News iJan 15, Task force wants Internet for all by 225 kzooi 2004 The Ottawa Feb 15, I A 15 |MaritaMoll 1104 Citizen 2001 What do you want the Net to be?. If ' and Leslie you want it to serve all Canadians, Regan Shade you'd better get involved
Cobourg Daily Feb 21, Committee assessing area's Internet 1 FR Valerie 275 Star '2001 needs ONT MacDonald Standard May 3, Task force working to connect all D7 Dan Rubinstein 350 2001 i Canadians. Affordable access to Net goal of federal initiative The Globe and Jun 14, Cities get their fibre B.l5 | Guy Dixon 1288 Mail 2001 Standard Jun 18, Internet vow seen as boon for high- D.4 Kathryn May 403 396
2001 tech industry 10 National Post Jun 18, Report kicks off debate on who picks C.3 Jill Vardy 762 2001 up the bill for broadband: High speed internet: Telecoms look to Ottawa to pay bulk of costs 11 Toronto Star Jun 19, Internet promise too costly, Tobin A.03 Les 525 2001 says ; Ottawa to ask private-sector Whittington partners for help 12 Toronto Star Jun 19, Foreign control not the issue: BCE D.05 Tyler Hamilton 624 2001 head ; Public monies needed to build broadband links 13 National Post Jun 19, Broadband socialism; [National C.17 Terence 802 2001 Edition] Corcoran 14 North Bay Jun 19, Task force urges government to A.8 James Baxter 505 Nugget 2001 connect more Canadians 15 Cobourg Daily Jun 19, Internet strategy; [Final Edition] 10 612 Star 2001 16 The Windsor Jun 21, The Internet; Government shouldn't A.6 642 Star 2001 plug in 17 The Ottawa Jun 22, The new e-speranto: A federal task A.15 Timothy 882 Citizen 2001 force would keep the Web in the Denton and hands of the people — where it Francois belongs Menard 18 National Post Jun 22, Stick a spike in it: Nation-wide high A.15 775 2001 speed Internet service is the last thing we need 19 Sault Star Jun 23, Content Key to Making Internet C.7 James Baxter 539 2001 Work: Report; [Final Edition]
20 Standard Jun 25, The next national dream: B.l Bill Currie. 1509 2001 Multibillion-dollar plan will link the nation with high-speed communications 21 Chatham Daily Jun 26, No handouts for Internet access; 4 442 News 2001 [Final Edition] 22 The Globe and Jun 27, A 13 David Johnston 533 Mail 2001 Broadband critics are shortsighted 23 The Globe and Jul 2, All' Lloyd 1163 Mail 2001 Broadband' the final frontier Axworthy 24 National Post Jul 3, Broadband gap, [National Edition] C.19 David Johnston 588 2001 25 National Post Jul 7, Tobin's broadband scare: Why a C.ll PaulKedrosky 1929 2001 national network? The cynical answer is that with an Internet user here, an Internet user there, soon you have more than a few voters 397
26 Toronto Star Jul 8, Banding the country together; 06 2001 [Ontario Edition] 27 Whitehorse Star Jul 25, Captain Handout and the Broadband 11 Walter 2001 Boondoggle Robinson 28 The Globe and Nov 15, Speedy national Net touted B.19 Gerry Mail 2001 Blackwell 29 Expositor Nov 17, City library's CEO supports plan for A.4 Richard Beales 2001. broadband access 30 New Brunswick ,Nov21, Rural areas not likely to see Lisa Poirier Telegraph 2001. broadband soon Journal il Toronto Star Nov 26, Is innovation slipping from reach? ; E.04 Anderson 2001 Sept. 11 shook priorities in Ottawa Charters among them the Liberal government's much-touted agenda to span the nation with powerful broadband communications. But if the Feds fall short, can business fill the void? 32 The Globe and Nov 26, Competition key to Internet issue: B.l David Akin Mail 2001 OECD 33 i Standard - Nov 29, Tobin's grandiose plan will cost all Freeholder 2001 taxpayers 34 Calgary Herald Dec 9, Filling in digital divide shows iF.5 Jay Bryan 2001. Ottawa's skewed priorities 35 Leader Post Jan 19, RIP Tobin's 'Net plan G.3 Kevin 2002. O'Connor 36 Daily Mercury Jan 31 Canada needs to get on the high A. 11 David Crane 2002 speed Internet highway