High speed internet won’t save rural communities, says a sociology professor from Newfoundland’s Memorial University.
Ivan Emke told a session at a recent national academic conference in Saskatoon that if he was prime minister he would increase support for traditional forms of community media and spend less on new technology.
He said local weekly newspapers and community-based television and radio stations are better at connecting people in small towns and rural areas. As well, he added, something should be done about media ownership patterns, in which a few chains set the template for news delivery.
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Emke based his comments on surveys he has done in rural Newfoundland and Ontario that asked people how they found out what’s going on in their communities. No one in Twillingate, N.L., mentioned the internet, but 52 percent mentioned the local cable TV channel, 23 percent said other people and six percent said the newspaper.
A radio operating from a high school in Campbellford, Ont., broke down historic rivalries and led to the establishment of satellite stations in the nearby towns of Tweed and Madoc.
In other communities, including Benito, Man., local residents asked the survey team to help them set up community newsletters.
Emke said communication tools can act as a glue to draw people together. According to the Canadian Weekly Newspaper Association, private citizens are the top news source for local media at 40 percent, followed by local politicians at 30 percent.
“This is very different from urban papers where the top source for news is the fax machine.”
In the same May 30 session, researcher Laura Ryser from the University of Northern British Columbia said her work with small Canadian towns has found that the number that had doctors dropped to 42 percent in 2005 from 47 percent in 1998. More startling was the reduction of nursing services to 37 percent from 53 and social workers to 26 percent from 42.
She said the burden has shifted to the individual, who must pay to travel to access government-offered services.
Ryser said regionalization is one bright light. Communities are banding together with their neighbours to find innovative ways to offer basic services.
