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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 paper develops the concept of "lived policy" for the methodological toolkits of critical, qualitative communication policy scholars. Lived policy seeks to understand how public policies are lived by those impacted by them. It is inspired by research in "lived religion" and "lived theology" which connect theological studies with the lived realities of those who practice religion. Lived policy aims to humanize the policymaking process and the critique of public policy by grounding it in the lives of those most impacted by policy decisions. Examples from a larger study on US rural broadband policy are used to illustrate this approach. [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]