| Reviews / Comptes Rendus | Labour/Le Travail, 51

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Rowland Lorimer and Mike Gasher, Mass Communication in Canada, 4th ed. (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2001)

THE FOURTH EDITION of one of the best textbooks ever written on media and Canadian society, Mass Communication in Canada, is out. In it, Lorimer and Gasher have clarified and simplified the third edition and made the following list of changes: updated information in the text; increased the emphasis on public communication (by cutting back the paper treatment of communications history and adding relevant historical URLs to the website); divided the policy chapter in two — one on broadcasting and telecommunications and another on cultural industries; re-written the chapter on journalism; placed all the discussion on technology into one very large chapter; and altered the discussion on geo-politics to a discussion on globalization.	1
The various editions of this textbook read like a history of the last fifteen years in Canadian communications. First published in 1987, the text has been repeatedly updated for content and approach in order to reflect the whirlwind of change that has encompassed media and society as a field of study.	2
In fact, the authors tell us that part of the reason for this fourth edition was their need to address the pace of change in recent times. Whereas they once had a lag time of four or five years in the production of a book, they now have barely a year, especially for a book about communication and society. Lorimer and Gasher feel they have solved this problem to some extent by using the book's website http: <http://www.masscomm.qc.ca> for updates to the text.	3
Mass Communication in Canada provides an excellent first look for post-secondary students at the complex societal factors affecting communications in Canada. It presents a multidimensional look at the field, introducing only enough theory to enable the application of theoretical constructs in the real world.	4
This textbook would make an ideal teaching tool in a college or first-year university class. Each chapter is short (about 30 pages), contains slate blue, restful-to-the-eye, boxed and illustrated material, and offers a list of four or five websites containing further information, a half-dozen references, and as many study questions. The book also includes a well-written glossary, full list of references, and an index for the curious, or engaged reader.	5
The text begins by defining mass communication as a set of practices; then it makes a quick historical connection between democracy, politics, culture, and the media, before concentrating on the ways in which these forces currently operate in Canada.	6
The fourth and fifth chapters provide students with a banquet of theoretical possibilities for the analysis of media content and audience effects. As an introduction to such approaches as literary criticism, structuralism, semiotics, post-structuralism, pragmatics, discourse and conversational analysis, content analysis, political-economic analysis, and media form analysis, Chapter 4 does an excellent job of presenting students with a wide range of research tools for examining communication content. The chapter complements this tool kit with actual analyses of media campaigns and a short discussion of the connection between media content and social issues.	7
Chapter 5 begins with a banal outline of five academic approaches to audience research: effects research, uses and gratifications, cultural studies, feminist research, and reception analysis. But then the chapter turns its gaze to industrial approaches to audience research, with special emphasis on such crucial areas as reach, share, and viewing time. This practical application is followed by an outline of the importance of formative research (e.g. focus groups) and summative research (e.g. program effectiveness). The chapter concludes with an extended illustration of the research organized by Canada's Print Measurement Bureau, which serves the nation's publishing industry and houses the world's richest print audience database.	8
Other chapters are dedicated to communication law and policy, the structure and role of media ownership in Canada, and the role of journalists as content producers. The first nine chapters, then, place primary emphasis on the experience of media in Canada.	9
Not surprisingly to anyone who has read earlier incarnations of this textbook, Lorimer and Gasher use chapters ten through twelve to move outward from the Canadian environment to the global. It is in these final chapters that the authors demonstrate most clearly what concerns them about the context of mass communications in Canada. And it is these concerns that have actually driven the fourth edition. Taking an approach informed largely by the concerns of political economy, Lorimer and Gasher use these three chapters to deal at length with issues of technology and society (the longest chapter, at 60 pages), corporate globalization, and speculations about the future of communication in the digital age.	10
A major impetus to the fourth revision came from the changing nature of communication since the advent of the Internet. The authors write that public communication is quickly replacing mass communication because the electronic technologies allow the reader to produce content as well as consume it. The "transmission of messages made by many is far surpassing the production and distribution of a limited set of products made by a few ..." (xi). This sea change in the Canadian communications polysystem has decided implications for the roles played by media organizations, journalists, policy-makers, regulators, teachers, and the public.	11
The final reason for producing this fourth edition of Mass Communication in Canada devolves from the corporate agenda of globalization. Lorimer and Gasher note in particular how the incremental growth of market forces and international trade agreements seriously challenge the ability of nations to produce effective social policy. Their book is, in part, an attempt to critically assess efforts of the Canadian government and its regulatory bodies to ensure that media meet the cultural, social, economic, and political needs of the Canadian people.	12
Evelyn Ellerman Athabasca University

Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.