[WSIS CS-Plenary] Civil society activism and Communication-information policy

[Milton Mueller]

This may be of interest....

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Syracuse University's Convergence Center releases report 
on citizens' role in shaping communication and information 
policy
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"Reinventing Media Activism: Public Interest Advocacy 
in the Making of U.S. Communication-Information Policy, 
1960-2002" 

The research report analyzes the role of citizens groups in 
shaping communication and information policy. The full report 
and the data on which it was based can be downloaded for 
free at http://dcc.syr.edu/ford/tnca.htm 

The study 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. 

The report had its genesis in a realization that there was 
no long-term, strategic analysis of public interest advocacy 
around communication and information policy, despite the 
fact that philanthropic foundations and members fund such 
groups and many people join or support them. 

For activists and policy-oriented advocacy groups, the 
report provides a sense of historical perspective, an analysis 
of different modes of advocacy used in communication and 
information policy, and an assessment of its sources of 
strength and its weaknesses. 

"This is a long-term analysis of organized efforts by citizens 
to change public policy toward communication and 
information," says the report's principal author, Professor 
Milton Mueller of the Syracuse University School of 
Information Studies

The research was funded by the Ford Foundation's 
Knowledge, Creativity and Freedom Program. 

Report Summary:

Chapter 1: A Vision of the Policy Domain
We define and defend a vision of communication and information 
policy (CIP) as a comprehensive and integrated policy domain. 
We also define and describe the three primary modes of advocacy 
around CIP issues.

Chapter 2: A Goal: Institutional Change
We draw on theories of institutions and institutional change to 
provide both a goal for specifying what citizen collective action 
could achieve, and a benchmark for assessing its impact.

Chapter 3: A Bird's Eye View: Four Decades of Congressional 
Activity and Interest Group Organization in CIP
A macroscopic overview of the quantitative data. 

Chapter 4: The 1960s and 1970s
We describe and assess the mass media activism of the mid-
1960s and 1970s around broadcasting and cable, the period 
of the most rapid rate of growth in the population. 

Chapter 5: The 1980s
We describe how the 1980s was characterized by major 
changes in both the political climate and the type of 
communication-information policy issues under consideration. 
We document the appearance of computer professionals and technologists organizing around computer-related policy issues 
in the organizational population for the first time.

Chapter 6: The 1990s and early 2000s
We show how digital technology became the focal point of 
institutional change in CIP, leading to an explosion of 
Congressional activity, bringing in a new generation of advocacy 
groups and creating a major change in the composition of the 
advocacy organization population.

Chapter 7: Conclusions
We attempt to summarize our findings and draw some conclusions 
about the future of CIP advocacy organizations and their policy 
agenda.