Photos courtesy of Daphne Idiz

Jointly sponsored by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and the CCA, this prize “encourages a new generation of academics to contribute to Canada’s public policy development through research on emerging issues in information and communication studies.”

Idiz’s paper explores the complex and evolving policy challenges posed by global streaming services to cultural policy frameworks in both Europe and Canada. Through a comparative analysis of the European Union’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive and Canada’s Online Streaming Act, the paper examines how requirements for local content prominence and investment are complicated by the online environment.

The paper highlights the limitations of current regulatory responses in achieving their purported goals of protecting and promoting cultural diversity. Idiz argues that while regulatory updates in the context of streaming are needed, current policies remain detached —to varying degrees—from the actual needs of cultural producers and the realities of global streamers.

Read the full paper here.

This paper examines the evolving role of global streamers in shaping European and Canadian production cultures, focusing specifically on regulatory challenges. By comparing the implementation of the revised Audiovisual Media Services Directive and the Online Streaming Act, it explores how prominence requirements and investment obligations are challenged in an online context. This paper employs an interdisciplinary framework and mixed-methods including qualitative interviews, interface ethnography, and legal doctrinal analysis. It concludes by arguing that further guidelines are needed to address the complex dynamics of global streaming services and highlighting that concerns at the forefront for producers remain unresolved by current policies.