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[DMCA-Activists] Communication-Information Policy Activism: A New Enviro
From: |
Seth Johnson |
Subject: |
[DMCA-Activists] Communication-Information Policy Activism: A New Environmentalism? |
Date: |
Thu, 15 Jul 2004 16:40:48 -0400 |
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Citizen activism around communication-information policy: anew
environmentalism?
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 14:45:05 -0400
From: "Milton Mueller" <address@hidden>
================================
Research analyzing role of citizens' groups in shaping
communication and information policy released.
================================
Communication and information policy (CIP) has taken its place alongside
the environment as one of the main preoccupations of lawmakers, according
to a new report by Syracuse University professor Milton Mueller. The report
is titled "Reinventing Media Activism: Public Interest Advocacy in the
Making of U.S. Communication-Information Policy."
The full report is available at http://dcc.syr.edu/ford/tnca.htm The
report's data on congressional testimony and public interest organizations
will be downloadable from the project's Web site.
The report traces the evolution of U.S. citizen advocacy from the broadcast
licensing challenges of the late 1960s and 1970s through the
telecommunication regulation reforms of the 1980s, the battles over privacy
and Internet censorship of the 1990s and the conflicts over digital
intellectual property and media concentration in the early 2000s.
"There are many parallels between the emerging citizens' activism around
communication-information policy in the late 1990s and the emergence of the
environmental movement during the 1960s," says Mueller.
The report compiles data on how many public interest organizations are
involved in CIP and how that population has changed over the past four
decades. It also analyzes how many commercial and professional interest
organizations are involved in CIP.
Key empirical findings of the study show how CIP has grown in importance:
* During the late 1990s and early 2000s, CIP replaced the environment as
the policy domain of greatest congressional activity, as measured by number
of hearings.
* From 1997-2001, the annual number of congressional hearings devoted to
CIP surged to approximately 100 per year.
* The number of public interest advocacy organizations focused on CIP
has not changed much since the 1980s, but the rise of the Internet in the
mid-1990s brought a major change in the nature of those organizations.
Organizations focused on criticizing or regulating mass media content
declined in the late 1990s; the new organizations that formed in the 1990s
and 2000s tend to be focused on rights-oriented advocacy related to digital
technology, such as privacy rights, First Amendment rights and rights to
fair use of intellectual property.
* In its measurement of congressional testimony by public interest
groups, the study found that during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) dominated representation of public
interest perspectives, accounting for 20 percent of all testimony by public
interest groups on CIP topics. In the second half of the 1990s, however,
organizations such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the
Consumers Union and Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) reached
parity with the ACLU.
* The population of public interest advocacy organizations focused on
CIP is overwhelmingly liberal in ideological orientation. Advocacy
organizations classified as liberal made up 68 percent of the total
population in the 2000s, up from 48 percent in the 1980s; the conservative
share has declined from 21 percent in the 1980s to 13 percent today.
The research was supported by the Ford Foundation's Knowledge, Creativity
and Freedom Program.
The Convergence Center at SU supports research on and experimentation with
media convergence. The Center is a joint effort of the School of
Information Studies and the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
Its mission is to understand the future of digital media and to engage
students and faculty in the process of defining and shaping that future.
http://www.digital-convergence.org
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