Español, resúmen: el siguiente boletín de prensa es sobre un estudio recién develado sobre los movimientos ciudadanos en torno a las políticas de información y comunicación en EEUU. Desafortunadamente el estudio sólo existe en inglés en http://www.digital-convergence.org/.
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English:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Edward Byrnes
Monday, June 28, 2004 Phone: 315-443-2782
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Communications issues as important as environment, says new Syracuse
University Convergence Center report
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,
titled, "Reinventing Media Activism: Public Interest Advocacy in the Making
of U.S. Communication-Information Policy," analyzes the role of citizens'
groups in shaping communication and information policy.
"This is a long-term analysis of organized efforts by citizens to change
public policy toward communication and information," says Mueller. A short
version of the report is published in the July/August 2004 issue of The
Information Society. The full report is available at
http://www.digital-convergence.org/.
The report traces the evolution of 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
interestorganizations are involved in CIP, and how public interest groups
interact with business and professional lobbyists in the policy arena.
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.
* Although the number of public interest advocacy organizations
focused on CIP has not changed much since the 1980s, the rise of the
Internet in the mid-1990s is associated with a major change in the nature of
those organizations. Many organizations focused on criticizing or regulating
mass media content died off 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 25 percent of all testimony by public interest
groups on CIP topics. In the second half of the 1990s, however, the ACLU
lost its dominance to new organizations such as the Center for Democracy and
Technology (CDT), the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and the
Consumers Union.
* The top five public interest organizations testifying before
Congress on CIP issues from 2000-2002 were:
1) CDT, with 13 percent of the testimony slots of public interest
groups;
2) Consumers Union, with 9 percent of the slots;
3-4) EPIC and ACLU, tied with 8 percent of the slots;
5) U.S. PIRG, with 5 percent of the slots.
* 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 report's databases on congressional testimony and public
interest organizations will be downloadable from the project's Web site at
http://www.digital-convergence.org/.
Mueller says his research began with a realization that there was little
long-term strategic analysis of CIP advocacy, despite the fact that
philanthropic foundations fund public interest advocacy and many people join
or support such groups.
"As far as we know, this is the first study to apply the tools of
organizational ecology and recently developed data sources on congressional
hearings specifically to communication and information policy," Mueller
says. SU doctoral students Brenden Kuerbis, Christiane Page and Kasama
Kongsmak compiled and analyzed the data.
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 between 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.
Officially chartered in 1870 as a private, coeducational institution of
higher education, Syracuse University is a leading student-centered research
university. Syracuse's 12 schools and colleges share a common mission: to
promote learning through teaching, research, scholarship, creative
accomplishment and service while embracing the core values of quality,
caring, diversity, innovation and service. The 938-acre campus is home to
more than 18,000 full- and part-time undergraduate and graduate students
from all 50 states and 90 countries.
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a global network of activists, academics, and practitioners
working toward stronger alternative, community, and citizens' media.
Una red global de activistas y academic@s apoyando
los medios alternativos, ciudadanos y comunitarios
Contact: Clemencia Rodriguez
University of Oklahoma
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