Since the advent of multiple Web platforms, including Facebook, which have literally engulfed the advertising windfall, the traditional media have experienced a serious existential crisis and some have fallen in battle, including the late cultural weekly Here Montreal, later followed by Seeto speak only of the metropolis.
This is explained, in particular, by the algorithms which made it possible to target segments of the population with surgical precision.
Faced with this state of affairs and to use a fashionable word, some private radio stations have been able to “reinvent themselves” by developing a business model from south of the border. Which was based on the two main axes of “reducing content production costs and offering sponsors a specific audience”, as journalist and sociologist Dominique Payette pointed out in her essay. The bullies and the bug (Lux, 2019).
Results ? A culture of confrontation, which only required a loud-mouthed facilitator and a diffuse indignation, specific to any society, to channel, was put in place.
Why ? Because it is much less onerous, as one might guess, to pay a single host, even a star, than to maintain a newsroom rigorously composed of professional journalists.
The product therefore became the animator in question. This coincided very well with the era of emptiness of which the philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky spoke in 1983, specifying that the collective and ideological revolt of the 1960s and 1970s had been replaced by indifference and narcissism.
And since the product became the star animator, with whom a large proportion of the population identified, the latter would not hesitate to return the favor to its sponsors from now on. In short, to transit from the general diffusion (broadcasting) to narrowcasting (narrowcasting).
That is to say, a passage from a generalist position to a hyper-circumscribed posture, which is characterized by right-wing populism favoring effect rather than facts.
His characteristics ? A rock sound and musical style corporatean uninhibited spread of sexist and racial prejudices, an inflamed criticism of pseudo-scandals, personalized attacks, a political commitment of the animators (contrary to journalistic ethics), a constant appeal to the so-called “common sense”, a denunciation of ” feminazis”, “enverdeurs”, “environmenters”, the poor and the Aboriginals, without forgetting an exacerbation of the culture of the tank!
We then speak of a “narrative” whose objective was to feed and federate, even to create, the famous segment of angry white males (angry white men). These blue collar workers who have been ostracized from society by the globalized economy and who have made a certain Donald Trump successful in the United States.
In Quebec, we also play a lot on the resentment of blue-collar workers towards white-collar workers, those employees of the National Assembly who frequent the fine restaurants of the Grande Allée and gargle fine wines at the expense of the “real world”. while despising him.
In short, the good old class struggle, but recovered by the black gold, that is to say the car dealers and the service stations, which largely finance the said radio stations of confrontation.
This earned us the arrival in active politics of one of their most popular representatives, Éric Duhaime, who was able to take advantage of the generalized anxiety and the inevitable errors in pandemic management.
It is not for nothing that the majority of the protesters, hardly educated, went there from their conspiratorial rantings by filming themselves, as an outlet, with their cellphones at the wheel of their big tank.
The juxtaposition of these phenomena to the youthfulness of our society, marked by heavy laughter and intimidating and apolitical comedians, has facilitated the emergence and the uninhibited speaking out of what the American child psychologist and researcher David Elkind calls “egocentrism of the adolescent”.
A type of behavior, very well illustrated by the recent escapades of comedian (and former float announcer) Guillaume Lemay-Thivierge at the Gémeaux Awards Gala, which is manifested by many characteristics, including these:
The illusion of invincibility. The subject believes himself to be safe from all dangers.
Personal storytelling. The teenager thinks he is destined for an exceptional destiny and thus escapes consensual rules.
Excessive self-awareness. The teenager is convinced that everyone is interested in him, his thoughts and his actions as much as himself.
Idealism and critical thinking. He imagines an ideal world that is often very far from reality and he often exercises a critical spirit towards authority figures in general and his parents in particular.
Apparent hypocrisy. He advocates certain values, but acts in contradiction with them (for example, in environmental matters).
A propensity for discussion and argument. The adolescent (or teenager) never misses an opportunity to argue.
With this culture of the tank still very present in Quebec, especially in the region of the Old Capital, it is useless to wonder why the government of François Legault insists so much on building its damn third link between Quebec and Lévis, and this, despite the ” common sense” precisely and demographic studies which reveal to us that such a work would be unjustified, since the population is aging and that it is, de factoless inclined to travel from one side of the river to the other.
This also explains why he is fighting hard on his right in the region with Éric Duhaime, who, even if he is indignant when it is reminded Everybody talks about ittakes over the good old populist techniques of POTUS 45, another skilled communicator and manipulator of ideological pixie dust who could well return to power in 2024.
No, with a Coalition avenir Québec strong with 90 seats and a Conservative Party of Quebec without a seat, but with 14.6% of the vote, we are not yet out of the criss de char…