Though it has been a couple of decades since McGill professor Marc Raboy laboured in the trenches of the daily media, rarely a month goes by now without his name popping up in the papers. The Beaverbrook Chair in Ethics, Media and Communications is the go-to guy for reporters looking for a quote on the media and communications industry in Canada.
As the cornerstone of the Media@McGill research hub, Raboy works to apply McGill’s research strengths to the rapidly evolving global communications environment. “When McGill created the endowed chair, which is unique in Canada,” he says, “they wanted to revitalize communications.”
While Raboy’s newspaper commentary centres on the Canadian communications landscape, his interests are much broader. Communications policy, after all, is no longer just about protecting “cultural” industries like newspapers or television. Rather, it is about the nature of citizenship and sovereignty, especially in the Internet era. “Globalization changed all of that and raised new questions,” says Raboy. He aims to define and answer those through his Media@McGill research, which examines Canadian communications law – from the CRTC to copyright law – to define the state of the nation’s “communication rights.”
This work is consistent with his career to date, which has produced books on the interaction of media and Quebec social movements, reports for such diverse bodies as UNESCO and the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, appearances before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage and academic positions everywhere from Stockholm to Oxford.
Occupying an endowed chair at his alma mater, McGill, since 2004, Raboy now has the resources and network of colleagues to give heft to the major debates that will dominate communications policy in the years to come. Media@McGill is tackling such hot-button topics as the politicization of science and technology in Canada, crime, media and public culture, and music and copyright. “Few people in Canada are working on these problems,” he says. “They can’t be dealt with locally, though. We need new networks, new methodologies. We’re at the cutting edge,” says Raboy.