Digitalization of Society and Socio-political Issues 1

13Cultural Policies 2.0: Rebuilding the Intervention of Public Authorities

The transformations linked to digital technology affecting the cultural industries are numerous and significant in several respects¹. They raise fears of an imbalance between English-language productions intended for the world market and local productions, which are more difficult to export, discover and get the attention of an audience. New digital platforms are emerging as powerful vehicles for global intermediation, shaping the contours of a new global cultural industry and dictating the form, nature and flow of digital cultural product flows. Several authors (Benghozi 2011; Benghozi and Benhamou 2008; Vlassis 2015) stress the importance of State interventions in the restructuring of cultural industries. However, fundamental questions remain as to how and at what level one should intervene in a context of rapid change and globalization. How can and should public authorities respond to these processes in order to define policies and regulatory frameworks conducive to the development of a cultural offer, which is certainly a vector of competitiveness, and also of diversity and creativity?

Our obejctive in this chapter is to understand the nature of these transformations and their impacts on cultural industries as well as the effectiveness of policy and regulatory instruments aimed at protecting and promoting the diversity of cultural expressions in Quebec in the Canadian context. We discuss the political ...