CLIC Québec

Promoting Québec’s local content and cultural industries on the Internet

According to data released [PDF] by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority in March 2016, 34% of Canadians have purchased books online, 33% tickets for shows and cultural events, 24% games or interactive mobile applications, 23% music and 22% movies, videos or television on demand services. The problem is that most of these content or cultural products used online are of foreign origin. For instance, the geographic distribution of Quebecers’ online purchases indicates that purchases of cultural goods and services are mainly made through sites of American companies. This is particularly the case for music, films and video games (78%) and online books/magazines/newspapers (54%).

In this context of growing e-commerce and domination of the offer of foreign cultural products/content offered by the international digital platforms (Netflix, Amazon, Apple Music, Spotify, Youtube) in Québec, the CLIC Québec project looks to raise awareness from policy makers and to strengthen the capacities of the players of Québec’s cultural industries in order to guarantee the marketing, promotion, distribution, discoverability and online accessibility of Québec works and contents, both in Québec and internationally.

CLIC Québec, with the financial support of the Internet Society Foundation through its Beyond The Net program, will foster, on the one hand, the dissemination and wider access to diversified local content on the Internet and, on the other hand, contribute to improve the policy environment for regulating new platforms and digital broadcasting services. The benefits of the project will also stimulate and enrich the national public debate on issues such as quotas for the dissemination of French-language content in the digital environment or the taxation of digital companies, providing online cultural content and services.

Collect and Analyze

In order to assess the stakes, challenges and impacts of the Internet on local content, CLIC Québec will lead the development of an Observatory of networks and interconnections of the digital society in Quebec (ORISON), in partnership with the Centre d’études sur l’intégration et la mondialisation (CEIM) at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). Its primary mission will consist in collecting collect, analyzing and interpreting data related to:

  • society (connectivity of rural areas connectivity,  connectivité des zones rurales, digital gaps);
  • culture (cultural and linguistic diversity online);
  • economy (cultural e-commerce, digital taxation, competition and regulation of Internet service providers and content providers).

 

ORISON will position itself in the longer term as a watcher affected to the oversight of the impacts of the Internet on content from Québec, in particular its discoverability and dissemination.

Compare

All the data collected will enable a comparative study of the presence and visibility of Québec’s audiovisual and musical content on local (Club Illico, Tou.tv, ONF, Crave.tv, Fabrique culturelle, Stingray) and international platforms (Netflix, Spotify, Apple Music or Youtube), based on a measure of the online discoverability of Québec content.

Train

CLIC Québec will then keep leading the pace by organizing training workshops (on metadata and indexing of Québec content, on marketing, distribution and online monetization techniques of Québec products/content), particularly targeting cultural entrepreneurs, artists/creators and other professionals of Québec’s cultural industries.