The CDCE is offering a guide to show how digital technology has changed the ways in which works are discovered, how new intermediaries have emerged between cultural content and their audiences, and what new strategies cultural organizations have had to develop to promote their online content. Through this guide, the CDCE wishes to recall the essential role of governments in implementing policies to protect and promote the diversity of cultural expressions. The CDCE releases this document as Bill C-10 amending the Broadcasting Act is being debated in the Canadian House of Commons. It intends to contribute to the debate by demonstrating why the regulation of online programming services is now fundamental to ensuring that local and national cultural expressions can be discovered on the Internet.
This guide is in part informed by the work of the Centre d’études sur l’intégration et la mondialisation (CEIM) of the Université du Québec à Montréal, which in 2018 undertook research on practices in the promotion and dissemination of Canadian Francophone content on the Internet. A research report1 entitled Pratiques culturelles numériques de promotion, de diffusion et de monétisation du contenu francophone canadien sur Internet. Tendances, obstacles et opportunités was published in February 2020 by the Laboratoire de recherche sur la découvrabilité et les transformations des industries culturelles à l’ère du commerce électronique (LATTICE), attached to the CEIM.
The CDCE’s guide first looks at the concept of discoverability. Adopting a stakeholder approach, it presents the issues underlying discoverability, reports on the practices adopted by certain cultural organizations to promote their content, and shows how urgent it is now to implement measures adapted to the digital environment. In the appendix, it offers a range of resources on the subject, studies and analyses, as well as events and training courses accessible to cultural professionals and the public.