Constructing the Quebec Referendum: French and English Media Voices

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
Constructing the Quebec Referendum: French and English Media Voices
Abstract
The author studies the role played by the media in shaping and interpreting the 1980 Quebec referendum campaign on "sovereignty-association". She addresses interrelated issues in public opinion creation during the 1980 campaign. She explores how the ideologies of Quebec and Canadian nationalism were constructed and modified by the separate French and English networks, and how their idiosyncratic visual styles and thematic selections reinforced Montreal viewers' linguistic and political divisions. In addition, the author compares French and English media professionals and discovers how their work settings and their perception of their roles had become polarized a decade before through the imposition of the 1970 War Measures Act. The two journalistic groups were affected by its imposition in radically different ways, resulting in much more self-censorship and bland programming on the part of the French media than the English media during the 1980 referendum. Finally, the author demonstrates how the instant playback capabilities of television, newly developed at the time of the referendum, have affected news discourses and turned electoral coverage into personalized and sensationalized 'tabloid formats.' These formats, the author argues, narrowed citizen's abilities to conceive of alternative political interpretations and actions.
Place
Toronto, ON
Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Date
1998
# of Pages
262p.
Language
en
ISBN
0-8020-0909-3
Citation
Robinson, Gertrude J. Constructing the Quebec Referendum: French and English Media Voices. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1998.
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