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While called the "bedrock" and "cornerstone" of US media policy, the localism principle has been chipped away over 40 years by the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) full throated embrace of market-based practices. Recently, however, localism has emerged as a pivotal battleground in telecommunications. Through case studies of three recent regulatory issues—local cable franchising, municipal broadband, and small cell deployment—this paper examines the role of localism in US-based cable and telecommunications policy. It coins the term "telecommunications localism" to capture the changing technological focus of media regulation, from content to infrastructure. In regulatory actions over the past decade the FCC has simultaneously acknowledged local municipalities' role in telecommunications deployment and actively worked to curtail this power through deregulation. These deregulatory actions strip municipalities of their autonomy over license negotiations and local rights of way and stymies the development and deployment of local communication systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study offers a systematic qualitative investigation inside a news and broadband desert. Despite popular attention to the ramifications of limitations of local news and internet access, most recently and acutely during the coronavirus pandemic, there has been no scholarly research into communities where these two deserts overlap. This article confronts this gap. Built on 19 in-depth interviews with residents of a rural East Coast county in the United States, we argue that life in a news and broadband desert requires a substantial amount of labor to obtain the local information and connectivity many take for granted. Our findings demonstrate three areas of increased labor: (1) informational, (2) infrastructural and (3) emotional. Ultimately, this study illuminates how these three aspects of labor and two deserts overlay on one location, highlighting the inequalities faced by those in such a difficult, demanding and, often, disheartening environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waiting is a way of experiencing the effects of power. This article finds those waiting for fixed broadband connection are powerless to end the waiting and increasingly frustrated with the powerful—the governmental officials, policy makers, and broadband providers—who control their waiting. This article, built on 19 interviews with residents of a rural county in the United States, details the lived experiences of those waiting for a fixed broadband connection and shines a critical light on the unequal power dynamics of digital inequality and waiting. The findings demonstrate residents suffer from "chronic waiting" for a connection. They also wait while using the internet, via inferior mobile connections, laboring through issues such as buffering. Finally, the findings illustrate the only way to avoid "technology-induced waiting" is to wait in alternative ways, including turning into a "second-shift" family to enjoy internet service in the middle of the night. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the book Media Capitalism: Hegemony in the Age of Mass Deception by Thomas Klikauer. In doing so, it places the book in conversation with the decades-long debate as to the nature of contemporary capitalism, specifically the question whether the digital age in which we live represents a new and novel information/network/internet society, a new form of capitalism, or simply an extension of the status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies the roles of counties in the deployment of high-speed internet ("broadband") networks in the United States. Counties play crucial roles in local governance, but have been absent from discussions of broadband policy, planning, and deployment by both lawmakers and scholars. Rectifying this, we report the results of a survey of counties in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Using thematic coding analysis, themes from our survey include: (1) mapping and the ongoing issue of identifying un- and under-connected areas; (2) funding and the use of public money; (3) strategic partnerships with electric cooperatives, investor-owned ISPs, and other counties; and (4) urban bias. Based on these themes, we argue that counties play three crucial, but heretofore neglected, roles in broadband deployment: funder, partner, and mobilizer. Moreover, we argue that counties are eager for greater responsibility and authority over deployment. This paper concludes with recommendations for how Virginia can amplify the roles and responsibilities of counties in broadband deployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the knowledge gap regarding small market newspapers in the United States. We address a deceptively simple research question: what is the state of small market newspapers in the United States as seen through the eyes of practitioners and industry experts? Based on in-depth interviews with experts and practitioners, we argue for a more nuanced vocabulary to describe newspapers and local news. Grouping all newspapers into a monolithic industry – as general sector analyses often do – suggests a homogeneous experience. That is not the case. Smaller publications face their own challenges and opportunities, and they define success and innovation on their own terms. This reality needs to be better understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. rural-urban digital divide has been a policy concern for more than a decade. The issue has intensified with the COVID-19 pandemic and the requirement that people live, work, and study online from home. This is not possible for more than 42 million Americans, most notably those in rural communities, who lack access to high-speed Internet (broadband). Despite a policy of universal service and billions of dollars for deployment, policy makers have been unable to close the rural-urban digital divide. To understand this disjuncture between policy and deployment, this article analyzes current U.S. rural broadband policies as developed and implemented by the Federal Communications Commission. Drawing on critical political economy and theories of policy failure, I argue that rural broadband policy has failed in three capacities: meaning, mapping, and money. These failures occur because of a "politics of good enough" that dominates U.S. rural broadband policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Buckingham's observation that academic research either has to become public knowledge or its originators must have a high visibility in the public realm before their research can find inclusion into policymaking processes, this article offers a variety of examples of how academics have managed to bridge the gap between media and communication policy scholarship and policymaking. Contrary to the long-standing belief that policy impact is extremely difficult and rare to achieve, we argue that junior scholars have many opportunities to have their work become part of the policymaking process through new forms of conversation, collaboration, coalition-building, changing perceptions of public knowledge, and a more conceptual understanding of impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication in policymaking and regulation has been of interest to political scientists for the last 15 years. Lamentably, the conceptualization and analysis of communication in media policymaking and regulation has yet to garner much attention from media policy scholars. Drawing on theories of power and new institutionalism, we address this paucity by introducing a theoretical and methodological approach that centers on the intersection of communication and power in media policymaking. Such a framework is particularly required for media policy studies, since media companies not only represent the regulated parties, but also control the avenues of policy communication. This tremendous amount of power raises normative concerns for bias, silence, and capture of the policymaking agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local broadcasting is at a crossroads in Western media systems. While regulators work to address emergent challenges, an enduring tension within the discourse of local media regulation remains how to define 'the local.' Stemming from the inability to meet this challenge, an artificial duality has emerged between communities of place and communities of interest within regulatory discussions. The larger epistemological question, therefore, remains undertheorized: How can we think through these issues in a productive fashion, rather than reducing them to an artificial dichotomy of spatial versus social? Through the use of illustrative instances from the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, I argue that the neo-Marxian theory of critical regionalism is a useful framework to approach this question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen numerous attempts by community broadcasters around the world to reinvent their practices in an effort to remain relevant and financially sustainable in the digital age. One proposed initiative is to have community programming distributed via satellite, either in the form of a single channel or as a subscription service for local stations to find programming. Combining two case studies and multiple research methods, this article investigates the potential impact of satellite distribution on community broadcasting in Canada and East Africa. We observe that it is often not the community media organizations themselves that are pushing for satellite delivery, but, rather, outside actors such as media corporations and non-governmental organizations. As a result, we argue that a more spirited discussion within the community media sector is warranted to better understand the implications of this technological shift in delivery mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article critically examines the use of elite interviews in media and communications policy research. It addresses the fit between various analytical frameworks and elite interviews as a primary source of data, interviewee selection, access, the conduct of interviews and data analysis. It is argued that there is a lack of methodological explanation and reflection in our field of study. Partly, this is determined by the preferences of publishers and space constrains but also a widespread reluctance to engage with methodological issues. This contributes to the diminishing relevance of large amounts of scholarship for policy-makers who tend to privilege studies based on narrowly defined and soundly elaborated empirical methods. Clear and concise methodological rigour, systematization and ethnographic reflexivity, thus, play an incredibly important role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the changes, challenges and opportunities present in American community media through a case study of PhillyCAM, a community television/media center in Philadelphia, PA. From this ethnographic study, it is suggested that community media navigate the tensions between television and digital media/user-generated content through reliance on place and liveness. In shifting from ‘community television’ to ‘community media’ these organizations are able to situate themselves as dynamic components in a local and participatory media ecosystem, develop new programs and strategic partnerships, and differentiate themselves from other organizations, while remaining consistent with their original mandates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The television systems of Canada and Australia are often assumed to be similar if not synonymous. Both are dominated by American imports; rely on a networking of stations; and trace their media systems to a combination of American and British influence. Moreover, in the past decade, both have implemented tremendous changes to their broadcast policies, particularly with regard to local television. Yet despite these similarities, scholars have never critically reflected on the evolution of these countries’ local television policies. As such, this article concentrates on how Canada and Australia have historically framed, defined, and implemented the concept of localism in broadcast policy. Through an analysis of policy documents from 1950 to 1963, the argument is made that when compared with Australia, localism was not an immediate priority, but rather a taken-for-granted assumption by Canadian policy-makers. Thus, the nationalism debate in Canadian television was fought at the expense of the local. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This comparative study addresses the policies and practices of community television in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. In particular, I examine how community media organizations are transforming themselves to meet the demands of a digital world, and how these experiences are reflected in policy and regulation. Findings suggest that the policies governing community television do not correspond to what has been experienced by practitioners. Drawing from theories of the public sphere, the argument is made that policy does a disservice to community television by failing to acknowledge the importance of place, bodies, and practice. This is problematic, as it fails to distinguish community media from user-generated digital content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]