Reinventing Media Activism: Public Interest Advocacy in the Making of U.S. Communication-Information Policy, 1960-2002

This 91-page report offers a strategic analysis of the role of citizens' groups in shaping communication and information policy (CIP) in the United States. Its authors ask, "How effective has such advocacy been? What are its sources of strength and what are its weaknesses? How have changes in technology and political institutions affected modes of organization, the agenda of the advocates, and the ability of public institutions to incorporate citizen action into communication and information policy?"

The report shares the results of research supported by the Ford Foundation's Knowledge, Creativity and Freedom Program. Conducted as part of Syracuse University (SU)'s Convergence Center project, this research used both organisational ecology (a social science method that looks at organisations in a
particular field as a population and analyses how the size and composition of the
population changes over time) and a quantitative examination of hearings and testimony on CIP issues before the United States Congress.

A key concept informing this report is that of citizen collective action, the gist of which is captured in this excerpt from the report: "In a free and democratic society, citizens influence the political process not just by passively voting....They also organize to continuously shape policy and legal outcomes, and to express their opinions to public officials so that the officials will make decisions that reflect their own needs, problems and interests. Most of this lobbying is driven by economic interests....But there are also citizens who organize to promote some concept of the public interest. These groups promote ideas, ideologies, values, policies, laws or regulations that they believe will benefit society as a whole." In short, these groups seek to support and sustain the common good.

Using that concept as a lens, the report traces the evolution of citizen advocacy through various periods over 40-odd years: broadcast licensing challenges (late 1960s and 1970s), telecommunication regulation reforms (1980s), battles over privacy and Internet censorship (1990s), and the conflicts over digital intellectual property and media concentration (early 2000s). One finding here is that "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." The report compiles data on the number of public interest organisations involved in CIP and on changes in that population over time. It also examines how many commercial and professional interest organisations are involved in CIP, and how public interest groups interact with business and professional lobbyists in the policy arena.

Empirical findings shared in the study show that CIP has grown in importance in the United States context. However, the authors urge that "A reinvented communication-information activism needs to develop an analytical framework that deeply comprehends the relationships between free expression, privacy, infrastructure regulation, intellectual property, digital identity and government information policy and relates social norms to them in ways that produce viable and effective policies."

The research report's databases on congressional hearings and testimony, and on the population of public interest advocacy organisations are downloadable from the Reinventing Media Activism page on the Convergence Center website. One may also join a listserv to discuss and comment on the report.

The Convergence Center at SU supports research on and experimentation with media convergence in an effort to "understand the future of digital media and to engage students and faculty in the process of defining and shaping that future". This is the first of two reports produced as part of the project; a second, as-yet-unpublished report will concentrate on international institutions and transnational advocacy related to CIP, with a focus on contemporary activity and issue networks.