Introduction

This chapter offers a guide on how to study the media industries in the age of the internet and mobile phones, using Canada as a case study. It is based on research done as part of the Canadian Media Concentration Research (CMCR) Project and reflections on how to recast how our field thinks about the political economies of communication. It draws on lessons learned from work done as part of the International Media Concentration Research Project, a project spearheaded by Eli Noam that resulted in the publication of Who Owns the World's Media (2017) – an authoritative and detailed review of the telecommunications, internet, and media industries in thirty countries. It also relies on experience gained from participating in several contentious policy and regulatory proceedings that have shaped the internet, mobile wireless, and media in Canada in recent years.

The starting premise of this chapter is that we must take the media industries as serious objects of analysis, and clearly define what we mean by ‘the media’. Media concentration is more important than ever in an age of mobile phones, the internet, and information abundance. This chapter will introduce some of the essential sources, tools, and challenges that are present in this sort of research. The aim is to encourage engaged, independent, and critical scholarship that is reliable, reasonably easy to use, and open to others to verify and use for their own research.

Like everybody, media researchers have limited time, resources, and knowledge and, consequently, they must set a hierarchy of research priorities. This means putting the structure, dynamics, economics, evolution, and forces that shape the media industries at the top of the list (Garnham, 1990). This focus is crucial because we live at a critical juncture in time when decisions made in the near future will shape the media landscape for decades – if lessons from the ‘industrial media’ set down in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are any guide.