Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - October 8, 2020, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A7 THINK TANK PERSPECTIVES EDITOR: BRAD OSWALD 204-697-7269 ● BRAD.OSWALD@FREEPRESS.MB.CA ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM A7 THURSDAY OCTOBER 8, 2020 Ideas, Issues, Insights ANDREW HARNIN / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies at a hearing in Washington. The Trudeau government says it’s time for the social-media giant to start paying for the content of creators and media. Facebook reaps profits, returns little I T’S a promise I can’t wait to see fulfilled. In its most recent speech from the throne, Justin Trudeau’s government pledged to ensure the revenue of web giants “is shared more fairly with our creators and media.” As a journalism professor, I think that’s great news for Canadian journalists. Canadian media have been struggling in the past decade — and more than 2,000 jobs have been lost since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. But how much will the contributions from digital platforms amount to? How can we calculate what news is worth for them? I’ll focus on Facebook, both because we can extract Canadian revenues from its financial docu- ments and also because it doesn’t have a revenue- sharing model. For the first two quarters of 2020, Facebook reported revenues of US$924 million in Canada alone. Over 2018 and 2019, Facebook made nearly US$6 billion in Canada. It should be noted that nearly 98 per cent of this turnover comes from advertising sales — it’s the same good old business model that has sustained news media for the past 200 years, but Facebook has tailored it for the digital age using emotional manipulation. To find out what proportion of this attention is the result of journalistic content, I used CrowdTan- gle, a public insights tool offered by the company to look for content on Facebook, Instagram and other social networks such as Reddit. Research- ers have been able to access it since 2019, under a partnership with Social Science One. For each of the 30 months in the period between Jan. 1, 2018, and June 30, 2020, I used CrowdTan- gle to identify the 30,000 posts that generated the most interactions on pages whose administrators are predominantly located in Canada. I got 900,000 Facebook posts from just over 13,000 different pages. Of these, close to 500 pages belong to news media. Together, they posted almost 80,000 items. This means media pages have accounted for 8.9 per cent of the Canadian content on Facebook pages. This proportion of the company’s Canadian sales represents more than half a billion dollars since 2018. Having said that, we must take into account the fact that Facebook does not generate revenue simply when a post is published, but when people interact with this content by sharing it, liking it or commenting on it. So let’s take a look at how inter- actions are distributed by language and page type since Jan. 1, 2018. Out of more than 7.6 billion interactions, more than 400,000 were triggered by journalistic con- tent. That’s 5.3 per cent of the total. This way of calculating, which weighs the place of journalistic content by the lowest number of interac- tions it generates, still means that the Canadian me- dia have enabled Facebook to raise nearly a third of a billion dollars over the past two and a half years. Of course, my study has its limits. Facebook generates revenue in Canada when advertisers buy ads to reach Canadians. In order to more ac- curately measure Facebook’s revenues in Canada, it would be necessary to examine what content Canadians are viewing on this social network. But Facebook does not share this kind of information. The best we can do, therefore, is to look at what is produced by pages administered in Canada. Besides, it’s not only pages on Facebook. There is also content on groups and profiles. And Facebook generates revenue through Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. But it is only possible to collect country data through the pages. The main takeaway from this analysis is that there is a gulf between what the media allow Face- book to generate as revenue and what Facebook returns to them. Kevin Chan, director of public policy for Facebook Canada, stated in Le Devoir recently that Facebook has spent $9 million on various journalism projects in Canada over the past three years. There are other ways Facebook benefits the media — they can monetize their stories through “instant articles,” where content remains on Face- book in exchange for some revenue sharing with the media, or the video platforms Watch and IGTV, Facebook’s attempts to compete with YouTube. Facebook also funds some journalism education initiatives at various universities, including Ryer- son University. However, instant articles have been abandoned by many media outlets, and creators trying Watch have gone back to YouTube. In both cases, it’s because Facebook doesn’t share enough of its revenue. Australia introduced legislation that would force Facebook and Google to sit down with the Austra- lian media and negotiate to share revenues. Cana- dian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault seems to have been inspired by this approach. Facebook has reacted to Australia’s intentions by threatening to block users from sharing local and international news. Just imagine Facebook without news: Would we use it as much if all we could share with our friends was clickbait? Making Facebook share its revenues would there- fore be a triple win. First, with a little more money, the media would be able to hire more journalists. I say “a little” because I know Facebook alone won’t save the media, but it would certainly help. Second, the federal government (and all Ca- nadians) would win too, because supporting the production of quality journalism is a concrete way to fight misinformation. Third, Facebook would win because Canadians would have greater assurance that it would be a source they can trust for their information needs. Jean-Hugues Roy is a professor of media studies at the University of Quebec in Montreal . This article has been edited for length; the full version can be seen at winnipegfreepress.com or theconversation.com/ca. News consumers need to demand more U.S. PRESIDENT Donald Trump’s ceremonial drive in an SUV on Sunday, to wave at fans gathered outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center despite still being under the care of doctors for COVID-19, is a classic example of mediatization. This is a political leader who will do anything to ensure the media spot- light remains on him, and in a positive way. Of course, who can blame him? Here he is, desperately seeking re-election against former vice-president Joe Biden, and after what can only be described as a disastrous first national debate, Trump has been struck down by a disease he has downplayed for months. While many Democrats may be privately expe- riencing some schadenfreude, none has had the bad taste to say anything out loud that could be construed as taunting or celebratory. Meanwhile, Trump has been doing everything he possibly can to convince Americans that he’s recov- ered and back in the driver’s seat, including an early return to work and, presumably, the campaign trail. So, what is mediatization, and how have other po- litical leaders used the media in similar ways? Me- diatization is when political actors stage dramatic events in order to get the attention of the media — and in particular, television. Which is exactly what Trump did on Sunday afternoon, when he left the Walter Reed hospital for a drive around the facility to wave to supporters who had camped out to show their support. One doctor at the medical centre denounced the spectacle as “political theatre.” But mediatization is not a one-way street. Media play a role in this dynamic, giving priority to stories that provide the drama and the theatre, and paying less attention to the duller aspects of politics, largely because they need to sell advertising based on the size of the audiences they attract. Increasingly, we’re seeing more “infotainment” and less informa- tion about issues, because many of today’s “news” consumers aren’t interested in much else. There are several examples of “political theatre” in which politicians, in tandem with special- interest groups, have appeared together to get media attention. One high-profile demonstration involved the Yellow Vest movement that converged on Parliament Hill in February 2019, with then- Conservative leader Andrew Scheer appearing at the “United We Roll” protest in support of Alberta oil and gas workers who had lost their jobs because of a downturn in the industry. Another example is when former Green party leader Elizabeth May and former NDP MP (now Vancouver mayor) Kennedy Stewart were arrested in 2018 for protesting against Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion in Burnaby, B.C. These are great ways for politicians to get pub- licity, by offering TV stations a story with strong visuals for their evening news package and night editors at newspapers the images they need to brighten up their pages or websites. But as news consumers, it seems we’ve become ad- dicted to this type of coverage. During National Newspaper week, which runs from Oct. 4 to 10, per- haps it’s time that we started being less complacent about the information we consume and stop expect- ing to be merely entertained rather than informed. Quality newspapers are often the first outlets to challenge media spectacles for what they are, as we have seen with the criticism of Trump’s Sunday drive and, earlier, Scheer’s pop-in at the Yellow Vest protest. I can’t tell you the number of times I have been told by students, friends and families that they find politics too boring to pay attention. In reality, what it’s more likely they are saying is that they don’t understand what’s going on, and they can’t be bothered getting up to speed. I blame our high school education system for this. We don’t have a strong enough civics compo- nent in our curriculum in the senior years of high school to educate young citizens on topics such as our Canadian party system and voting. Manitoba currently has a curriculum review ongoing; per- haps this is something that could be addressed. I blame parents, as well, who don’t sit down and talk to their children about current affairs and what’s happening in the world, whether it’s because they themselves don’t know, don’t want to scare their kids, or don’t make the time. Understanding what’s going on in the world creates a healthy interest in issues and a curiosity to understand something more than just banal, superficial entertainment. Understanding political issues is a responsibility we all bear, just like paying taxes and voting. And we need to support media to do their job, and then demand that they do more than provide us with political theatre. Dispense with the creeping me- diatization, and give us the information we need. As Free Press publisher Bob Cox said in a col- umn earlier this week, seeking the truth has never been more important. Shannon Sampert is a political scientist. shannon@mediadiva.ca Twitter: @CdnMediadiva Canada should capitalize on its zinc deposits ZINC is an important ingredient in disinfectants such as soap, so it plays an important role in preventing the spread of COVID-19. As we know, the twin pillars of CO- VID-19 prevention are social distancing and washing your hands properly. So min- ing this bluish-white metal is important to Canada’s strategy for addressing the pandemic at home. Beyond soap, zinc is used to galvanize steel to protect it from corrosion. And zinc is an essential element for our health, as over 200 enzymes in the human body require zinc to function. Canada is an important zinc producer and at one point was the world’s largest zinc provider. Zinc mines operate in Brit- ish Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut. You could almost ask where zinc is not produced in Canada. However, China is now easily the world’s largest producer of zinc, with almost 34 per cent of total global production. In 2019, China produced about 4.3 million tonnes of zinc. By 2018, Canada had fallen to ninth place in global production, with about 2.2 per cent of world output. The world’s largest zinc production site is an open pit zinc-lead-silver mine in Alaska, which accounts for 4.2 per cent of global production alone. Total global reserves — as recently as February 2020 — are estimated at 250 million tonnes. However, experts say that with the current heavy consumption of zinc, reserves will likely last for just 17 years. Australia has the largest zinc reserves, at around 68 million tonnes. Other sig- nificant reserves are in China, Peru and Mexico. Canada maintains bilateral diplomatic and trade relations with China, but with the mounting evidence that the Chinese weren’t transparent about the roots of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world may turn on them. New Conservative Party of Canada Leader Erin O’Toole has been aggressive and bellicose in his rhetoric against China since the pandemic began. And the Liberal government has begun to push away from China. If past behaviour is any indication, and especially in its economic relations with the United States, the world knows China is capable of retaliating when other coun- tries don’t follow its lead. In 2010, China restricted exports of rare earth elements to Japan over a diplomatic dispute, leading to a sharp increase in prices. That caused turmoil in global markets, given the impor- tance of these metals to many consumer goods. In this case, Canada was also an im- portant producer of rare earth elements, but was relegated to being an exporter of unrefined ore to China. Although world trading ought to operate on a price-based system of proper market signals, China often manipulates global markets for its strategic interests. Other countries also do this, but China is large enough to do it with great effect. For de- cades, the Chinese government has bought up production and supply chains around the world in these rare earth elements used in cellphones and electric cars, as well as advanced military hardware, in order to serve their strategic interests. Although zinc is not as strategically important as rare earth metals, Canada should shore up its domestic supply to avoid suffering as the result of any trade sanctions from China or other large play- ers. Just as the domestic supply of personal protective equipment became an issue of great concern in Canada as the pandemic ramped up, ensuring our country has a supply of metal that is used in disinfec- tants such as soap would be wise. Canada could also work with Austra- lia and other allies with dependable zinc reserves to ensure the global system has a reliable zinc supply based on proper mar- ket- and price-based considerations, not the threat of one nation manipulating global markets. Canada needs a national mining strategy that takes this into consideration. Joseph Quesnel is a research associate with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. — Troy Media JEAN-HUGUES ROY SHANNON SAMPERT JOSEPH QUESNEL A_09_Oct-08-20_FP_01.indd A7 2020-10-07 6:09 PM ;