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The Future of Canada’s Regulation of Media Content and Big Data in the Networked Society


LTEC Lab member Dr. Pascale Chapdelaine co-authored an article with Dr. Jaqueline McLeod Rogers that was recently published in the international peer-reviewed journal LAWS: “Contested Sovereignties: States, Media Platforms, Peoples, and the Regulation of Media Content and Big Data in the Networked Society.” This interdisciplinary article examines the legal and normative foundations of media content regulation in the borderless networked society. It applies the concept of sovereignty to states, media platforms, and citizens to examine the competing dynamics and interests that need to be considered and mediated. While there is growing awareness of the tensions between state and transnational media platform powers, the relationship between media content regulation and the collection of viewers’ personal data is relatively less explored. It analyses how future media content regulation needs to fully account for personal data extraction practices by transnational platforms and other media content undertakings. It posits national cultural sovereignty—a constant unfinished process and framework connecting the local to the global—as the enduring force and justification of media content regulation in Canada. The exercise of state sovereignty may be applied not so much to secure strict territorial borders and centralized power over citizens, but to act as a mediating power to promote and protect citizens’ individual and collective interests, locally and globally.




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