Introduction: Truth and Power

Speaking truth to power has always been an “iffy” proposition.  It is a process that is laden with critical questions and, at times, contradictions.  Does power really want to hear the truth?  Can the truth be compromised by the power relationship?  What happens when power and truth are on the opposite sides of an issue?  Who gets to decide? Based on what criteria?  In the service of what outcome?  Are we in in Camelot, where everything is settled or are we in Oz, where all reality is up for grabs?

One approach to bridging the gap between truth and power is policy research, defined here as the process of conducting research on a fundamental social issue in order to provide policy makers with pragmatic, action-oriented recommendations for alleviating the problem. 

Done well, policy research accomplishes the task of speaking truth to power even if power is reluctant to hear it.  Done well, policy research is candid, scientifically sound and fearless in its recommendations.  Done well, policy research is a fundamental and critical guide to public action.  Done poorly, policy research is an abomination that muddies the policy area and makes claim to expertise that it does not possess. Done poorly, it creates the cover that power needs to escape the truth.  Done poorly, it steals the public good.

In this essay I offer a practical guide to doing good policy research focusing on ways to make speaking truth to power an effective enterprise.  It is a model that I have developed over time based on the experience of conducting many policy research projects.  It is the product of considered approaches as well as trial and error.  Over time it has served me well and I offer it here as one approach to bridging the gap between the academy and the policy arena.  

I address such questions as:  What are the characteristics and principles of policy research?  What are the properties of the world of action? What are the stages of policy research and how do you know when you move from one to the other?  How does the policy researcher protect the integrity of the research during the process?  What is the role of politics in the endeavor?  Essentially, I hope that the guide will make policy research a much less “iffy” business and place us on the road between Oz and Camelot at the proper distance from each.

Where You Stand Depends on Where You Sat

A little history will help to clarify how I have come to the conclusions that I offer in this essay.  First, I have had the good fortune to spend my entire academic career in a graduate program that has, at its heart, the connection between the social issues of the day and the policies that are mounted to address them.  The School of Urban Affairs & Public Policy (SUAPP) at the University of Delaware explicitly identifies public policy in its title to emphasize that connection.  SUAPP consciously and specifically states in its charter that the “creation of usable knowledge” is one of the primary goals of the institution. 

As a result, the faculty, professional staff and graduate students of SUAPP regularly conduct dozens of policy research projects every year at the local, regional, national and international levels.  They include such policy areas as housing, poverty, community development, energy and environment, criminal justice and media, among others.  The policy research activity of the School reflects the culture and structure of the enterprise.  The approach is so well regarded among public affairs programs that it has become known as the “Delaware Model”.

I make this point about the Delaware Model because it seems to represent an approach to the relationship between the academy and the policy arena that is very different from the experience of the communications academy.  That was made very clear by emerging communications scholars who presented their research at the 2008 International Communications Association’s Pre-Conference regarding Bridging the Divide between Scholars and Activists, Engaging in Public Scholarship: Communicating Social Impacts. 

The over-riding sentiment expressed was the disconnect they felt between the research requirements of the academy and the policy research that they wanted to conduct (and were presently conducting).  The disconnect was made more profound in that these scholars saw that it need not be the case.  That is, the work in which they were engaged (they called it advocacy research) possessed all of the attributes of sound scholarly inquiry and it could easily be accommodated into the communications academy.  We had a long discussion about the choices that they would have to make as scholars, the conditions that created the disconnect and the steps that had to be taken to “bridge the divide”.   Fortunately, in my experience, I have not been confronted with such a dilemma. 

You’re Right, but That Won’t Play in Peoria.

It was the sentiment expressed in this comment from the governor of the state of Delaware over twenty years ago that ignited my interest in the media as an institution affecting policy.  I had begun my academic career examining crime and criminal justice policy and, while I had always had a keen interest in journalism and the media, they were not part of scholarly work.  A colleague and I had just completed a large policy research project in which we examined the causes for the overcrowding in Delaware’s prisons.  In short, we found that the overcrowding was an artifact of the state’s sentencing policies and not the result of increased crime.  Delaware was among the first states to adopt minimum mandatory and consecutive (rather than concurrent) sentencing policies and the effect of those policies were now becoming evident.  Both approaches, individually, would increase the amount of time that offenders would spend in prison.  When used in conjunction with one another, the effect on the growth of prison populations could be devastating.

We met with the Governor and prison officials to present these findings.  The Governor saw the logic and the merit of our research.  Then he said that, although he agreed that sentencing policy was the culprit in prison overcrowding, that is not what the public believed.  The public thought that increased crime was to blame.  Therefore, he chose a policy response that was in direct contradiction to the policy guide that the research suggested —he built another prison.  Of course, the sentencing policies that had caused the overcrowding of the first prison virtually repeated themselves and the new prison became overcrowded and the state built another. Delaware was not alone in its prison-building approach.  During the 1980′s and into the 1990′s, most states addressed prison overcrowding in the same way.

The obvious question to me then was: What was playing in Peoria?  How did citizens understand a social issue that was at odds with the facts?  What sources of information formed their cognitive map about crime in their communities?  Given those questions, especially about crime, it did not take long to focus on local television news, specifically, and media policy, in general.

Defining Policy Research

Although I began to expand my research agenda to include media and crime, I also continued to conduct policy research on criminal justice matters.  In so doing, I developed the model of policy research that I offer here.  And, as I moved into the examination of media ownership, localism and television news, the model has served well as a touchstone for organizing my activity.

The most complete definition of policy research that I have found was articulated by Peter Rossi and his colleagues.[1]  I state its major points here because I think that they capture the activity extremely well. Policy research is a mixture of science, craftlore and art in which science is the body of theory, concepts and methodological principles; craftlore is a set of workable techniques, rules of thumb and standard operating procedures; art is the pace, style and manner in which one works.

Policy research is the process of analyzing a fundamental social problem in order to provide policy-makers with pragmatic, action-oriented recommendations for alleviating the problem.  The issue under analysis comes from the world of action and the results of the analysis are destined for the world of action.

The World of Action

Rossi and his colleagues refer to a world of action that has important characteristics.  First, the world of action has time constraints.  Information is needed quickly.  Secondly, the language and concepts are different from those of the discipline.  But, most importantly, given my experience, the world of action contains a set of parties who control resources in an on-going system that involves conflict.  The researcher is outside of the system, but the research problem comes from inside the system and the research findings are injected back into the system. And, while the research results are arrived at through a system that is neutral to these interests, the results are not neutral in their impact on the world of action.  The research results will add to the resources of certain parties and diminish those of others.  In short, the power structure will change, to one extent or another. 

The world of action is, essentially, the policy arena and it is important to understand that the findings of policy research are only one of many inputs to the policy decision.  For the most part, policy is not made; it accumulates.  It has its own history, understandings, advocates and detractors.  As I stated earlier, the governor chose a policy option that contradicted the research results.  However, it would be unfair to characterize his decision as uninformed.  There were many “guides to action” that entered into his calculus and he made his decision based on a consideration of information beyond policy research results.  The policy researcher must understand this crucial attribute of the policy arena.  In short, sometimes the research loses.  Welcome to the world of action.

Doing Policy Research

Given the characteristics of  the world of action and the policy arena, I have developed a way of doing policy research that has served me well.  It consists of three stages: negotiation, analysis and communication.

Stage 1: Negotiation

In some ways, this stage is the most crucial of the three.  It involves the asking and the answering of a set of questions.  And it must be accomplished with a genuine give-and-take between the researcher and the policy-maker.  What is the policy issue that must be addressed?  What is the context of the problem within the policy arena?  Who came to whom?  This is a critical question because if I go unsolicited to the policy-maker, I must make the case for the relevance and the advantages of the research that I propose.  If the policy-maker comes to me, the question of relevance remains. 

As researcher I must be careful—not skeptical—of agendas.  The policy-maker may want the policy research to confirm a position or strategy that is already held.  Or, the policy maker may want the research to be a change agent for a change that is already thought out.  He/she needs a hammer; better yet, a screwdriver.  The policy-maker may want the appearance of activity and reluctantly uses research as a substitute.  Alternatively, the policy-maker may really want unbiased information.  Remember, we are dealing with a world of interested parties who control resources to one extent or another and the policy research results will likely affect the balance.

The most important concept that is negotiated in the first stage is the research question.  The agreement on this matter should take place over several meetings and discussions in which information flows in both directions.  The research question must be relevant to the policy-maker’s needs but it must absolutely meet the rigors of the scientific method.  It must be neutral.  This has often been a point of contention but clear discussions about the nature of research during this stage have proved invaluable.  Further, there is a “bottom-line” for me.  If the policy-maker insists on an articulation of the research question that does not pass scientific muster, then the process stops.  I have walked away from a number of policy research projects under those circumstances.  Sometimes you have to know when to fold’em.  However, that is rare.  The advantage of the negotiation stage is the clear opportunity for the researcher and the policy-maker to find common ground so that the requirements of each of their realms are satisfied. 

The product of the negotiation stage is a contract that specifies the responsibilities of each party.

Stage 2: Analysis

This stage is characterized by the conducting of the research.  Essentially, it is the traditional scientific process of  stating the research question, choosing the methodology, gathering the data and conducting the analysis.  The communication that was begun in the first stage must continue here for several reasons.  First, as in any research, unanticipated factors arise that require changes in the work, i.e. some data may not be available, etc.  Any changes that are required must satisfy scientific rigor.  This is why the implied methodological difference between applied and basic research is bogus. 

Research is research with the same rigor and grounding in method and theory.  Second, the changes must not come as a surprise to the policy maker.  The communication between researcher and policy maker that was established in the first stage will provide the basis for an understanding of the changes required by the scientific method.  This is crucial so that the policy maker has confidence in the findings.  It is very easy for a policy maker to disavow research findings that are unflattering by claiming that the rules changed in the middle of the game. 

The product of the analysis stage is a completed research report articulating the findings and any recommendations that are warranted.

Stage 3: Communication

The relationship that was established between the researcher and the policy maker in the first two stages is manifested in this stage.  Speaking truth to power is a process.  It is not a “once and done” event.  Effective communication takes time and effort.  That fact is sometimes lost on researchers.  Too often researchers drop off the final report on the policy maker’s desk and walk away feeling that the merit of the information is not only pre-eminent, but also self-evident.  That is a delusion.  There are many reports on the back shelves of policy makers’ offices that underscore the inaccuracy of that position.

In this stage the researcher advocates for the relevance and applicability of the research to guide policy.  There are many valid sources of information available to policy makers in addition to the research results as we saw with the Governor who chose to use the public perception of crime to drive corrections policy.  All of these sources of information have advocates; so, too, should policy research.  There are some that have argued that this advocacy is political and it would sully our objective reputation as social scientists.  That is fundamentally wrong.  The world is political, in the best sense of the word, i.e., reconciling differences.  The advocacy of the relevance and applicability of policy research results does not in any way compromise the scientific quality of the research.  Speaking truth to power does not occur in a political vacuum and if we are to be successful, to be heard, we must engage the world of action when that engagement is critical to the use of policy research to solve problems. 

An obvious question is how do we communicate. Yes, we all know about research reports.  They are very important.  But, in my experience, I have used many venues to communicate/advocate the relevance of the research results.  I have met with policy makers (both involved in the research and beyond it) to discuss the work, written op-ed pieces in the popular press, appeared on television and radio programs that addressed the question, participated in community forums, spoken with community groups working on the issue, among other approaches.  All of these communication paths are important because they not only communicate information about the particular research, they reinforce the fundamental notion that social scientific research is critical to the formulation of policy. 

Conclusion

As I wrote this essay I considered that the model of policy research I present here suggests a proximity between the policy maker and the researcher that is not usually the case between the communications academy and decision-makers.  But that is precisely the point.  As I understand it, the gap has been wide because, well, that is just the way it has been.  However, that need not be the case.  The communications academy has much to offer the policy world and that can begin with the development of contacts between them. 

The policy research that the Social Science Research Council has supported is a step in the right direction.  The policy research in which I am engaged that has been supported by the SSRC has put my colleagues and me at odds with the policy makers at the FCC.  The relationship between us and some of those policy makers is not characterized by the level of communication that I state in the model.   But, we do understand each other’s position and that has been crucial to the success of the policy research that we have conducted.  In short, we have engaged the policy process at its heart, and not in some abstract way.  And that has made all the difference.

There are limitations inherent in any model for research or social action.  So, too, with this set of suggestions.  The model is meant as a general set of principles to guide the process of speaking truth to power.  Some parts of the model will be more easily applied than others.  But, regardless of the limitations, it calls for an engagement of the policy process by social science researchers that will help them recognize just exactly where they are on the road between Camelot and Oz.

Danilo Yanich is the Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Delaware. He also directs the Local TV news Media Project at the University. Dr. Yanich has considerable experience in conducting policy research studies in several fields, especially media issues and criminal justice policy for over two decades. The work has been accomplished at the local, state and national levels. His most recent policy research has focused on localism and media conglomeration, particularly the effect of media consolidation on local content of local broadcast news.

Perhaps the greatest challenge confronting communications policymakers and policy researchers is effectively adjusting their analytical frameworks to account for the dramatic changes taking place in the contemporary media environment.  We saw this quite vividly, for instance, in the FCC’s media ownership proceedings, in which decision-makers and researchers grappled with questions related to if and how the Internet should be incorporated into assessments of the competitive conditions and diversity of local media markets (see, e.g., Napoli & Gillis, 2006). 

Today, with the emergence of what is commonly referred to as Web 2.0 (Mabillot, 2007), many of us in the communications field – and not just those of us dealing with policy issues – are confronting further changes in the media environment that have the potential to dramatically affect established theories, research methods, and policy frameworks (Benkler, 2006). 

Of particular importance is the rise of user-generated content and the associated uncertainty about what it means (in terms of both challenges and opportunities) from a research standpoint (e.g., Croteau, 2006; Fonio, et al., 2007).  For those of us focused on the intersection of communications research and communications policy, this evolution of audiences from primarily being receivers of content to also being producers and distributors of content (see Napoli, forthcoming) points us in particular directions in terms of research and policy concerns.  These new concerns are the focus of this essay.

 “Mass Communication” Revisited

First, however, it is important to ground this discussion in a broader consideration of what these developments in the evolution of media audiences mean for the field of communication.  What seems particularly striking about this current direction in the evolution of audiences is how, somewhat paradoxically, it essentially resuscitates the concept of “mass communication” that has been largely dismissed (or at least marginalized) in the communications field. 

The logic behind the decline of mass communication as an orienting term, which began in the late 1980s and picked up increased momentum in the1990s, was that the new media environment, with its ability to facilitate the targeting of small, homogenous audience segments due to increased media fragmentation, and its ability to facilitate increased opportunities for one-to-one communication via the emergence of email and mobile telephony, was one in which traditional notions of mass communication, involving the one-to-many dissemination of content to a large, heterogeneous audience who simultaneously received the content, represented an increasingly rare form of communication (see Chaffee & Metzger, 2001; Neuman, 1991).

Of course, the extent to which one saw the concept of “mass communication” as having diminished relevance depended upon what one saw as the concept’s key defining characteristics. 

An early definition focused on three elements: a) content is directed toward large, heterogeneous, and anonymous audiences; b) content is transmitted publicly, and often reaches audiences simultaneously; and c) the communicator tends to be, or operate within, a complex organization that may involve great expense (Wright, 1960). 

Other approaches to defining the term have downplayed the centrality of simultaneous delivery, given that the long shelf life of content allows it to aggregate audiences over time (Webster & Phalen, 1997).  Similarly, the centrality of an undifferentiated, anonymous audience has been criticized as more ideal-typical than realistic, given the long history of efforts to segment audiences according to identifiable criteria (Webster & Phalen, 1997; see also Napoli, forthcoming).  Other assessments of the term have emphasized the industrialized production and distribution of content.  From this perspective, mass communication is defined as originating from an institutional communicator (Turow, 1992). 

From “Mass” to “Media”

Clearly, the concept of mass communication has been subject to reassessment and reinterpretation over time. Over the past two decades many academic departments renamed themselves, abandoning the mass communication label in favor of terms such as “media studies” or “telecommunications.”  In 1996, one of the field’s major international academic associations, the IAMCR, changed its name, from the International Association for Mass Communication Research to the International Association for Media and Communication Research (Nordenstreng, 2008).  In 2001, one of the more prominent journals in the field, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, similarly changed its name to Critical Studies in Media Communication.  Clearly, then, the concept of mass communication has been on the wane.

The concept, however, seems poised for a comeback, though in a somewhat reconfigured form.  Specifically, when the term “mass” is conceptualized a bit more inclusively, to account not just for the receivers of content but for the senders as well, then the concept of “mass communication” in fact perfectly captures much of what is taking place in the new media environment.  Via representative Web 2.0 applications such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and Flickr, the masses are communicating to the masses (see Fonio, et al., 2007). 

Thanks to the increasingly global reach of the Internet, any notion of the relevancy of the concept of mass communication being undermined by the fragmentation of the media environment and the fragmentation of audiences holds a lot less water today than it did 15 years ago. 

Masses to Masses

As fragmented as the media environment may be, it is still relatively commonplace for a home-made video produced by an individual sitting at his computer to be watched by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people world-wide via YouTube, or for a song produced by a garage band to attract a similarly large listenership via on-line distribution.  A recent study by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company indicated that the primary reason that people post user-generated videos on-line is to achieve fame and recognition (Bughin, 2007).  Clearly, the intention here is to reach as large an audience as possible – not to target narrow niches.  In the contemporary media environment, the masses seek to reach the masses.

Why does this resuscitation and reorientation of the mass communication concept matter to the intersection of communications research and communications policy?  It matters because it highlights the fundamental new element of the process of (mass) communication requiring the attention of both researchers and policymakers.  Specifically, the process of mass communication as newly constituted now prominently features a much more – though far from completely – egalitarian communication structure, in which the “masses” operate alongside the traditional institutional communicators in the process of reaching audiences.  We are still in the relatively early stages of understanding the communications policy priorities that should be highlighted by such reconfigured dynamics (see, e.g., Benkler, 2006).

Access to Audiences

At the general level, the new media environment is one in which many of the separations and privileges associated with the traditional institutional communicator that long have been embedded in our regulatory structure need to be reconsidered.  This is particularly the case in terms of the issue of access.  Traditionally, the institutional communicator was separated from the audience largely by the institutional communicator’s level of access to the means of communication. 

Television stations, radio stations, cable networks, cable systems and the like all represented media to which only a limited few had access.  Such inequality was seen as an inevitable byproduct of the economic and technical characteristics of these media, not as free speech or public policy issues in need of remedy.  Efforts to carve out a more egalitarian right of access to the media (see Barron, 1967) gained some limited, and largely temporary, traction (Napoli & Sybblis, 2007) (Consider, for instance, the rise and fall of the Fairness Doctrine.)

However, it may very well have been the case then, and it is increasingly the case now, that the focus of communications policymakers and communications researchers should not be on the issue of access to the media, but on the issue of access to audiences (see Napoli & Sybblis, 2007).  What is the difference? 

Rights to Express and to Be Heard

The difference is that the notion of access to the media essentially stops with access to the means of producing a message.  Access to audiences picks up where access to the media leaves off by encompassing the extent to which such access is accompanied by the capacity to reach potential recipients of the message.  Thus, access to audiences goes beyond the speaker’s right to express herself; it also encompasses her right to be heard.  It is the distribution of speech that is at the core of the notion of access to audiences. 

Two speakers with access to the media can vary tremendously in their level of access to audiences.  A broadcast licensee in New York City traditionally has bad much greater access to audiences than a licensee in Omaha.  A cable network available in 80 million homes traditionally has had much greater access to audiences than a cable network available in 10 million homes.  A musician signed with a major record label traditionally has had much greater access to audiences than a musician signed to an independent label.  

Levels of Access

Clearly, there always have been different levels of access to audiences, even among those with access to the media.  These differences generally seldom have been thought of as violations of anyone’s speech rights, or as policy problems requiring attention.  This is somewhat surprising when we consider that there is, in fact, a much longer and more robust First Amendment tradition protecting speakers’ rights of access to audiences than there is protecting speakers’ rights of access to the media (Napoli & Sybblis, 2007). 

The courts have, for instance, upheld speakers’ rights to canvas door-to-door, to approach and offer information and ideas to citizens in public places, and to wield signs and banners, all in the name of protecting the basic First Amendment right that a speaker has to access audiences (see Napoli & Sybblis, 2007).  In all of these instances, the key question involves whether speakers’ access to audiences is being protected and promoted to the extent guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Audiences, Access and Policy-relevant Research

Communications policymakers only occasionally have emphasized access to audiences in their analyses (Napoli & Sybblis, 2007), but need to start doing so more frequently; and research can help make that happen.  Now, imbalances in speakers’ access to audiences are much less a function of the unavoidable technical or economic characteristics of the media.  Today, thanks largely to the Internet, an exponentially larger proportion of the population has access to perhaps the most significant medium of communication, and in that regard stands on equal footing with the traditional institutional communicators in terms of their access to the media. 

In this regard, the traditional access to the media disparity has been dramatically improved.  Now, for this new media environment to reach its full potential in terms of its ability to achieve greater equality in the allocation of speech rights, we need to focus attention on the issues that arise after access to the media has been achieved.  That is, what are the impediments to greater equality in access to audiences?  Do any of these impediments involve inappropriate institutional restrictions on speakers’ rights of access to audiences?  Since audiences are now themselves producers and distributors of content, these questions reflect particularly pressing concerns, since they now affect so much of the population.

Relationship between Access and Distribution

These concerns reflect the fact that the issue of access to audiences is largely an issue of distribution.  It continues to be the case that in user-generated content discussions, the focus is often misguidedly on the user’s ability to produce content.  Even the term, user-generated content, reflects this emphasis. 

This is not really the aspect of contemporary developments that is new or of the greatest significance.  Users’ capacity to generate content has been around for quite some time, due to the long-established availability of production technologies such as home video cameras, personal computers, and home recording equipment.  What is different today is the ability of users to distribute content, to use the Web to circulate their user-generated content to an unprecedented extent.

Making sure, however, that these producers and distributors of user-generated content are able to operate on equal footing and identifying impediments to this, must be a point of focus for communications policymakers and communications researchers.  While it is certainly the case that the new media environment offers a more egalitarian level of access to audiences than was the case in years past, it is important to emphasize that our media system should never be assessed primarily in terms of its performance relative to points in the past. 

Rather, it should be assessed in terms of the extent to which it is reaching its current potential.  Today, technology has given us the potential, within certain communications platforms, to place the individual and the institutional speaker on more equal footing.  And policymakers and policy researchers should work toward ensuring that this potential is met.

Network Neurality, Ownership, and Other Urgent Issues

The issue of access to audiences is central to many of today’s most important communications policy debates.  The net neutrality issue is essentially an access to audiences issue, as the discriminatory mechanisms that network service providers can employ to selectively block, disrupt, or slow the flow of Web traffic are essentially mechanisms for creating differentiated levels of access to audiences amongst speakers.  In this regard, the net neutrality issue is as much about speakers’ rights to reach audiences as it is about audiences’ rights to receive information. 

The media ownership issue is essentially an access to audiences issue, as greater concentration of ownership of media outlets creates further inequalities in access to audiences across speakers (see Napoli & Sybblis, 2007).  The protocols in the operation of Web search engines raise significant access to audience issues, as the placement order of Web sites in search engine listings is a key factor in determining the level of access to audiences enjoyed by different sites (see Napoli, 2008).

Beyond Conventional Policy Research

It is important, as economist Bruce Owen (2004) notes, not to conflate success with access.  That is, just because some speakers are reaching larger audiences than other speakers does not mean that access to audience imbalances requiring policy attention exist.  Some speakers simply are more popular than others. 

However, determining whether the patterns we are seeing are a reflection of success or access is not always clear.  Parsing out these differences, identifying situations where access to audiences is being inappropriately impeded, assessing the mechanisms and justifications, and developing potential solutions, all should be points of focus for communications researchers.  Such research feeds into the increasing importance for policymakers to understand the dynamics of the production, distribution, and consumption of content, something that communications researchers certainly are well-positioned to do. 

But here again, as has been the case in the past (see Napoli & Gillis, 2006), it is necessary for communications researchers who might not normally consider themselves policy scholars per se to consider the policy relevance of their work.  As should be clear from this discussion, researchers looking, for instance, at a wide range of issues related to the production, distribution, and consumption of user-generated content are conducting research that can potentially enhance our understanding of the contemporary dynamics of access to audiences, and can thereby feed into informing the ongoing transition to communications policy frameworks that extend far beyond the traditional institutional communicators and that instead account for the masses as mass communicators as well.

References

Barron, J. (1967). Access to the press: A new First Amendment right. Harvard Law Review, 80, 1641-.

Benkler, Y. (2006). The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Bughin, J. R. (2007). How companies can make the most of user-generated content. The McKinsey Quarterly, August.

Chaffee, S. H., & Metzger, M. J. (2001). The end of mass communication? Mass Communication & Society, 4(4), 365-379.

Croteau, D. (2006). The growth of self-produced media content and the challenge to media  studies. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 23(4), 340-344.

Fonio, C., et al. (2007, May). Eyes on you: Analyzing user generated content for social science. Paper presented at the Towards a Social Science of Web 2.0 conference, York, UK.

Mabillot, D. (2007). User generated content: Web 2.0 taking the video sector by storm. Communications & Strategies, 65, 39-49.

Napoli, P. M. (2008). Hyperlinking and the forces of “massification.” In J. Turow & L. Tsui (Eds.), The hyperlinked society: Questioning connections in the digital age (pp. 56-69). Ann Arbor, MI:  University of Michigan Press.

Napoli, P. M. (forthcoming). Audience evolution: New technologies and the transformation of media audiences. Manuscript in preparation.

Napoli, P. M., & Gillis, N. (2006). Reassessing the potential contribution of communications research to communications policy: The case of media ownership. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 50(4), 671-691.

Napoli, P. M., & Sybblis, S. (2007). Access to audiences as a First Amendment right:  Its relevance and implications for electronic media policy. Virginia Journal of Law & Technology, 12(1), 1-31.

Neuman, W. R. (1991). The future of the mass audience. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Nordenstreng, K. (2008). Institutional networking: The story of the International Association for Media and Communication Research. D. W. Park & J. Pooley (Eds.), The history of media and communication research: Contested memories (pp. 225-250). New York: Peter Lang.

Owen, B.M. (2004). Confusing success with access: “Correctly” measuring concentration of ownership and control in mass media and online services. (Stanford Law and Economics Olin Working Paper No. 283). Last accessed August 18, 2008 from http://ssrn.com/abstract=545302.   

Turow, J. (1992). On reconceptualizing “mass communication.” Journal of Broadcasting &  Electronic Media, 36(1), 105-110.

Webster, J.G., & Phalen, P.F. (1997). The mass audience: Rediscovering the dominant model. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Wright, (1960). Functional analysis and mass communication. Public Opinion Quarterly, 24, 606-620.

A Sceptical Activist[i]

Forgive me for sounding like the proverbial curmudgeon, but on being asked to contribute to this forum, and without meaning any disrespect to its instigators or the fine contributions to date, I have to admit to heaving a sigh of ‘oh no, not again!’ The thought of dredging up recollections, first or second-hand, of how non-academic ‘others’ convey, with barely a twitch of an eyebrow, scepticism about the social relevance of much research scholarship and with every right to do so often enough, is a disincentive in itself. And once over this threshold, I would then have to wrestle with all those uncharitable thoughts about the effects – personal or professional – that such disapprobation or, worse, disinterest (there is nothing more horrid in this profession than being ignored) may have had; if any.

Claims from many researchers that they are indeed committed to if not active in hands-on agitation around pressing issues of the day cannot mask the fact that neither this life-cum-career path nor research-for-research’s sake are ipso facto ‘relevant’ any longer. This shift in public perception and in social standing is not necessarily a bad thing given past excesses and ingrained conceits. (No tears shed for thee). Either way the onus is currently on we-researchers to come up with upbeat, sensible action-plans for bringing about a thaw in this particular ‘Cold War’. 

What such an exercise invariably boils down to, though, is the compilation of behavioural modifications, new skill-sets, and intellectual makeovers that researchers need to undergo – some have undergone – in order to be seen to be pursuing socially useful work, engaging in meaningful conversations with significant others; in this case policy-makers. After all, the world’s powerful actors are neither lining up outside your office nor televising your research seminar to hear what you have to say on any particular matter; a few notable living exceptions excluded (though it is they who most likely make the first step). Having a higher university degree or list of scholarly publications is not a passe-partout into the halls of power, to getting a toehold in hi-brow or broad-based public debates, to being taken seriously at all.

The latter is hard enough work amongst one’s peers let alone with the general public, legislators, or corporate players. And even if big money or think-tanks knock on your door, these sorts of collaborations come at a price. For, like it or not, the truth is that any sense of social entitlement or intellectual autonomy promised by scholarly pursuits in bygone days have eroded away. Nowadays, ordinary teachers/researchers, let alone that endangered species called the ‘public intellectual’ have to prove their worth according to new rules of engagement, shorter production schedules, and transnational regimes for research excellence and accountability. All of which are now far removed from traditional work-places and lines of patronage[ii].

Whilst the demarcation lines drawn between political and economic powerbrokers, research institutions, intellectual elites, and the street by previous protest generations and their comrades in universities were not in indelible ink[iii], exposés where subalterns ‘speak truth to power’ (see Spivak 1988, Said 1994), revel in the fearlessness of parrhesia (see Foucault 1984) or wage a tireless media battle against successive industrial-military complexes and political administrations (see Chomsky 1997) are fast becoming ancient texts in an academe that is increasingly idea-averse amongst other things (see Braman 2008). Sometime in the intervening years the relationship between self-proclaimed ‘engaged’ research/ers and social activism/activists in and around university campuses has undergone a sea-change of another sort; for staff and students alike as each party accuses the other of becoming de-politicized or out-of-touch respectively[iv].

Be that as it may, in recent years, which have seen a surge in transnational social mobilizations and high-level, UN brokered consultations around various ‘global’ issues (climate-change, carbon emissions, human rights abuses, poverty, credit crunches, the Internet), those who aim to do – dare I say it – ‘cutting-edge’ or ‘critical’ work that is not beholden purely to the weekly headlines or Zeitgeist of the month, and who see themselves also as actors not just thinkers end up in a classical double-bind. Caught between public and private funding flows, personal politics and professional commitments, impassioned (so ‘biased’) and scientific (so, ‘objective’) calls to action, this Catch-22 scenario leaves them, as it does many working women, damned if they do and damned if they don’t (Benhabib and Cornell 1986).

By the same token, for those academics (the term for those earning a living by teaching and research in higher educational-cum-research institutions) committed to social or political causes and who, whilst walking the line between social activism however defined on the one hand and, on the other, the codes and practices denoting ‘good’ (social) science, it is still all too easy to trip up on all these good intentions. On managing to stay upright then the next booby-trap to avoid is being hoisted on one’s own petard. Focusing research on socially- or policy- ‘relevant’ debates for the greater good by instigating institutional reform over the long term, does not necessarily mesh with public protest, radical forms of dissent or political mobilization premised on more transformative interpretations of ‘what needs to be done’[v].

Assuming then that all of the above can be reconciled at any one time, an even more insidious hazard needs to be negotiated. The demands of multilateral agenda-setting let alone mobilizing others in democratic, heterodox registers rather than in top-down, learned monologues first and, second, working towards broad-based popular mobilization, even within liberal democracies ostensibly founded on rights of public association and freedom-of-speech precepts, are not one and the same thing[vi]. But neither sit easily with producing ‘rigorous’ and ‘unbiased’ research with short-term deliverables that satisfy funders – private or public, institutional goals for research excellence (top ten institution, top ten journals, top ten search-engine hits).

Even if we-researchers could have this cake and eat it too it amounts to being a PhD-wielding cross between Agent 007, Che Guevara, and Lara Croft. Nor does it resonate comfortably, at least for some onlookers, with the narcissistic imperative of having to register on the tripartite Richter scale of name recognition; citation indices, public profile, and gate-keeping powers. Reconciling the call to produce research results that are ‘operationalisable’ as well as ‘canonizable’ in a working-world defined increasingly by these individualised dynamics of name-recognition and their upstream corollaries of  ‘marketization’ and ‘professionalization’ – measured and monitored quite literally in Google-search terms, is a tall order. In this respect, making communications matter (Karaganis, Price & Verhulst 2008), by and for whomever, has acquired a proprietary deadliness; with global pretensions to boot.

But this doesn’t, and shouldn’t let we-researchers off the hook. The complex interplay of reception and perception notwithstanding (know thy audience and please them, or else), setting out in this fatalistic way has me drawing a blank, stalled at the top of a well-worn slippery slope of disenchantment and suspicion, where critically-socially engaged inquiry is first in the race to the bottom. No, I shall have to accept defeat, own my profession’s relatively lowly social clout despite its relatively high self-regard, admit its inadequacy if not reluctance to connect with the real world and throw in the towel so I can drag my sorry posterior back into my ivory-towered corner. From there I can gaze upon all those actively engaged ‘others’ out there visibly making a difference, having an impact, sticking their necks out; all those whose modus operandi and public statements clearly underwrite their project of making the world a better place.

So my then publishing a critical expose or research-based analysis of any sort of test-case (in the right journal, mind), conforming to the publish-or-perish imperative of contemporary research cultures accordingly, wouldn’t cut the mustard with the critics; nor should it if we profess to be in the same game, agitating for the greater, not just our own good. It’s a fact; researchers are now the Slave, policy-makers and their constituencies now the Master. 

I feel better now, having ‘fessed up; come clean about the implicit futility of much scholarship, lamenting the passing of bygone generations of inveterate social critics, public intellectual-cum-political activists, and curmudgeonly role-models, as I do. So, having underpinned these reflections in the notes below with some examples drawn from my own – occasionally jaundiced – experience, what now?

First thing first: naming this particular elephant in the room can hopefully clear the air, open up ways of thinking reflexively about the theme of this forum, and tackling the recognised gap between those who think for a living, those who legislate or lobby for a living and, increasingly, those who engage in activism for a living, all of whom state a commitment to social change. Hopefully too to do so in a way that resonates with the spirit of this initiative.

So, second, and however idiosyncratic it may sound in the face of all this derring-do I shall contend that time and energy must be devoted to thorough – and tough reflection about the power-quotient of this sort of belly-gazing enterprise, especially when addressing issues about what divides and what unites communication researchers and policy-makers (where, and when?) let alone what has or hasn’t changed. Answers to this question are overlaid with the ebb and flow of shifts in power dynamics and forms of direct or indirect influence, all of which make for inversions and subversions of original (good) intentions. These are now operating as multi-platform and computer-mediated communications made up of new and old media-messages, political economic institutions, (global) media conglomerate, and social forces.

Third, having recognized the variable degrees of vested interest in any sort of change (reformist or radical), or continuity for that matter, along with the various levels of institutionalisation and socio-economic endowment that designate who gets to claim the higher moral ground, time to make way for a third group. They have already alluded to; advocate-activists and/or civil society groups. I won’t quibble on the distinction between these terms. Suffice it to say that they are a third interlocutor, protagonists who are not incidental to the research-politics-society nexus at issue here.

So, now I’ve come clean, I shall draw these confessions to a close with a thought experiment; ‘what ifs’ for further thinking and, if persevered with, alternative options that flow from other ways of getting to grips with this particular ‘unhappy marriage’ (see Hartmann 1981). All with the aim of not pre-empting or second-guessing preferred outcomes. For, as management and self-help gurus are keen to remind their clients, thinking outside the box – past the obvious is often the first and hardest step. 

What if? (1)

The whole notion that scholarly, activist, and policy communities can work together in concerted rather than ad hoc or begrudging ways is based on the supposition that these three realms are defined by ways of thinking, perceiving, and acting in the world that are, in the final analysis, commensurable. In other words actors share comparable world-views, draw on a shared pool of norms and values. Even taking into account institutional cultures, differentials in resources and ‘savoir-faire’ they are, nonetheless, interoperable realms. Explicit differences in political persuasion, institutional affiliation, education, professional training, and what anthropologists would call kinship patterns in the first instance and, in the second, subtle ones around geography, language, socioeconomic clout, cultural conventions, or wider patronage networks, what separates these realms and their communities are, at the end of the day, differences in form and style not in substance.

But what if they actually operate on parallel, not overlapping or intersecting planes; each contingent upon contradictory ways of being in, making-sense of, and acting upon the world let alone its multiple injustices? What if they are incommensurable?

If we were to consider this scenario for a moment then setting things right in this shaky relationship cannot just come down to declaring a willingness to enter into some sort of dialogue in the first place, putting aside prejudice, ambivalence, or past traumas in order to get all shoulders to the wheel. Nor is it simply a matter of setting out to create the necessary – communicative and practical – conditions for a level playing-field upon which any such a dialogue could then unfold (see Habermas in Borradori 2003).

In this scenario the very notion that there are implicitly shared, universally applicable ideas about what is wrong (diagnosis), how to fix it (treatment), and the future (cure or prognosis) is based on a disingenuous sort of humanism at best (‘we are all human-beings after all’). At worst it is an exercise in paternalism (‘we know best’). Any imminent ‘clash of civilizations’ is also ruled out by virtue of these realms’ non-contiguity. No solace there either.

One consequence of thinking through this rather discomforting take on how to go about ‘making communications research matter’ is that it gets rid of the notion that miscommunication, mutual incomprehension, cycles of contentiousness, and dialogues of the deaf around ends and means are simply a temporary glitch; once repaired the show can be put back on the road, problem solved, mission back on target.

A second consequence is that references to bridging so-called ‘divides’ or fixing ‘disconnects’ between actors from these realms take on a more ethically troubling hue. Such divisions, call them what you will, are not fractures in a single, seamless social fabric taken from a unitary ‘time-space continuum’. Rather they are evidence of at least three quite self-contained, even parallel social realities. Ones that have distinct and contestable histories of their own, underscored by specific ideational and material power operating along different axes of value, self- and group recognition and communicative modes, with different criteria for success and affirmation accordingly. They are comprised of distinct memories, narratives of past failures and achievements, and founded on particular visions of the past, the present, and the future; competing narratives of global ‘communications rights’, ‘media reform’, ‘ICT4D’ or ‘Internet governance’ that currently vie for attention and airplay, separately or together, could be cases in point.

If this is so, even just for a brief imaginary moment, then to proceed as if these endeavours are by definition contiguous is a Quixote-like endeavour. The question then is not so much how to get their constituencies back on track, back in touch with one another but, rather, under what conditions is it possible for them to change their very constitution in order to converge at all. And if so, according to what criteria, and on whose terms?

What if? (2)

The flipside to this ‘realist’ scenario in all its Hobbesian rejection of any sort of ‘idealism’ premised on a benign view of human nature or propensity for social cooperation rejects the presupposition of incommensurability. Whether this second ‘what if?’ is any more comforting is a moot point. In any case it reverts to the more familiar understanding that these realms not only operate on the same social plane but that they are actually intertwined with one another; interdependent. Pessimism and optimism, idealism and pragmatism are arrayed along the one spectrum and so can be rearranged in that they emanate from, and address a singular social reality that is universally applicable to all.

A kaleidoscopic one to be sure and difficult to ‘know’, to grasp in its entirety or to communicate adequately it may be, but not impossible in principle. However entrenched positions on this spectrum may become they are surmountable in the final analysis. What is at issue then is not a story about fundamentally different realities, science fiction-based notions of parallel universes. (That’s silly). No, what is at stake, at least under commonsense understandings of what constitutes civil society agitation or political agenda-setting under the ‘media, ICTs, and social justice’ rubric, are competing takes on what needs to be done now. If that is the case then questions about how to proceed are paramount. For that analysts need to make way for practitioners. No time to waste.

This scenario also presupposes that researcher, policy-maker, and activist-advocate are effectively the same (legal) person. If so then they can be made to interact – ‘communicate’ at certain points; indeed needs must. Within any particular shared undertaking the urgency lies in calls to action, not in calls for further reflection. Reaching consensus in the short-term overrides underlying disconnects that may grumble along over the long term[vii].

Either way this one-place, one-time, one-goal scenario in which recent communications research-policy circles finds themselves, where researchers are coming out of their ivory-towered corners in their droves to fight their own good fight or stand on the shoulders of giants, flies in the face of new combinations of material (‘hard’) and symbolic (‘soft’) power dynamics; the form and substance of which are only just becoming apparent.

Whilst there is plenty of space to beg to differ on what counts as ‘hard’ and what counts as ‘soft’ in an information age premised on multimedia and multilateral ‘scapes that constitute today’s ‘global cultural economy’ (Appadurai 2002), these dynamics bring with them subtle and not so subtle differentials in tone and orientation. These too are highly time-sensitive; in turn susceptible to the vagaries of political pomp and circumstance even within the lifespan of a particular policy-making domain and its respective protagonists[viii]. In those cases the assuming of a shared mission masks more than simply differences in operational knowledge, political ideology, or social mores (readers can insert their own examples here).

It all too quickly can be used to mask an insidious value-hierarchy between those who do and those who don’t get involved in hands-on policy-making[ix]; relayed down the line in a familiar rhetorical ploy of pitting those who ‘can’ against those who ‘can’t’ (as the saying goes; ‘those who can, do and those who can’t, teach’). As these distinctions emanate from within the same social reality – this scenario’s main presumption, and as key protagonists push towards said common goal any views querying these certainties is quickly positioned as churlish, ‘beside the point’ or, worse still, ‘purely academic’. Whilst analysts have their job to do after the fact any intervention along the way that causes confusion often sees trouble-makers quickly sent off the pitch.

But what if raising these reservations at the time is not beside the point at all? What I mean to say here is that so-called arguments over semantics are not simply ends in themselves, not always exercises in sophistry. Words and ideas certainly do more than simply mime social realities after the fact. As politician and legislator knows, words matter as does the spin they are given.

Terms of reference and formulations are exactly the moment where power differentials become codified in and as policy practice, only visible at the output end of the process, as outcomes and by then seemingly inexorable. So, imagining consensus and collaboration within the same time-space continuum is no reason to let hearty debate, or ‘good reasoning’ sit on the sidelines.

One consequence of this scenario is that this forum’s brief – making communications matter – gets inverted; considering how naming what, and who counts in communications research becomes also something that matters. Considering core assumptions is also action. Ideas do have historical (forgive the leap in scale here) consequences, not just actions. In other words, definitions are not innocent and the actions they underwrite need to be challenged as both thought and action.

Any sort of agenda, as principles or as operational mechanisms or action-plans are derived from how an object or problem is construed and then communicated as well as its objective existence (see Latour 2007); at least so long as the simplistic input-output linear model of communications is not taken as read. The moment for intervention is to rescue contestable terms from being all too quickly ossified, defused and denuded of their ambiguity.

But, again, claiming that there is conceptual work to do and that scholars are the ones best suited to do it, even when its all hands on deck, doesn’t let we-researchers off the hook either. For having accepted that these three realms of endeavour are at least partially contiguous in theory and having cast doubt upon how these points in common can maintain their inner integrity in the push and pull of real-life policy and political contingencies, what next? Are we not back at Square One, reiterating well-worn lines of division between thinker and doer, idealist and realist, philosopher and pragmatist, theory and practice?

If I were to sign off now then this would be a fair point. Instead, let us consider a third ‘What if?’ This will have to suffice to conclude these reflections and, hopefully, allow for further debate.

What if? (3)

What if we could rearrange the categories, and their social meaning; think about research as socio-political practice, activism as a way of thinking, and policy-making as activism? From there, already acknowledged crossovers – and tensions – can be talked about openly; real existing and dreamt up divisions and points in common revealed, examined and dealt with at actual (not presumed) overlaps between these realms. Perhaps some jumping sideways, out of well-worn grooves, could occur.

That said this exercise comes at a certain price for well-nurtured identity politics that often see activists on the one hand pitted against their would-be allies in academe on the other, with legislators watching on with detached amusement, assuming they bother. As for how funding-agencies and/or policy communities are courted by practitioners or researchers respectively, these two would be required to recognize more explicitly that both these agencies are also activists.

And as for how critical researchers and activists skirt around each other in various combinations of mutual ‘fear and loathing’[x], the first would be required to incorporate the knowledge and know-how of activists and their ‘professional’ colleagues in non-governmental organizations as knowledge-producers on a par with themselves.

Conversely, the second would want to pause and consider engaged scholars as practitioners in their own right. This is the crunch question for how non-academic activists and engaged researchers – ‘sceptical activists’ by training and predilection, can collaborate in the future to influence the trajectory of this power nexus, not a straightforward task and for that reason one that requires we begin with an understanding of complexity rather than a wish to ease complications out of analysis, action-program, or desired outcome. Even these pie-in-the sky sentiments call for concerted investigations into these latent intersections. At least more concerted attention to how they are emerging under the media, ICTs, and social justice rubric[xi].

Recalibrating typographies implies a rethinking of criteria. And as old habits die hard and, under the contemporary pressures to have research matter for today, not tomorrow or for the next generation in a 24/7 global political economy, older ideas often resurface as great (re)discoveries. Without claiming great novelty here, the following extrapolations can serve as closing parlays. 

First, activism need not be confined to direct, street-level or indirect advocacy operations. As educationalist practitioner-thinkers like Paulo Freire (1972), Ivan Illich (1971), and Sylvia Ashton-Warner (1963) brought to public attention, educational practice and institutions of (higher) learning are integral to socialization processes and resistance to them. Social change and politicization often starts in or through learning situations (formal classrooms included) as that’s where hearts and minds are moulded, around the world, and every day. That ‘schooling’, however defined, is also a site of intense social and cultural struggle on just this score underscores the political currency of this truism; concerned parents go onto the street, children get bussed into the ‘other’s’ neighbourhood, students storm university premises all along the way.

By the same token, alternatives to mainstream teaching practice, curricula design, debates about what constitutes diversity or inclusion in individual and community-based terms can never be taken as read. Every day in quite banal and not very sound-bitey ways these ongoing efforts have to compete with countermanding ways of articulating and apprehending the social and natural world to younger generations[xii]. This is becoming even more striking in an era in which learning – and those who learn have to submit to the twinned pressures of ‘global’ market and ‘local’ league-table forces. I could extrapolate here for quite some time in terms of personal and professional experience of being (lucky enough) to have engaged teachers from my early years through to my university study and to learning (the hard way) just what it takes, and what it can cost you when putting any ‘new’ pedagogical ideas and practises to work in classroom settings.

Suffice it to say that it is not only superiors but also students, paying customers now under performance-indicator pressures of their own, who can mount objections to signs of overt political commitment or pedagogies that aim to foster independent thinking rather than passive consumption. Whilst debates and struggles over any generation’s respective educational taboos do have their own shelf-life, endlessly recyclable nonetheless (consider the ‘back to basics’ discussions that reoccur every few years), being committed to education as a means to effect change means being there for the long haul. So the art here is to know when and where to persist, when and where to desist, and when it is simply a question of survival; but more importantly, to know the difference. For, at any given moment, important distinctions need to be made between the politics of the personal (ego) and the limitations of the sociocultural conjuncture (see Appadurai 2002).  

Second, innovative research and data-gathering can be, and is getting done regularly by non-academic researchers and activist practitioners, both in communities on the ground and within more professionalized advocacy organizations. Activists garner knowledge and make sense of the issue-areas in which they operate in quite rigorous ways; codes of ethical conduct, patterns of knowledge accumulation, consultation, and dissemination. What can limit these initiatives and these sorts of grounded knowledge is pressure to conform to ideal-type ideas about what constitutes ‘good’ research practice; debates about the form and substance of what constitutes ‘good’ or ‘bad’ science being one of the most politicized debates in academe despite protestations to the contrary. Interdisciplinary work in the fullest sense of the term is often happening in ad hoc ways here and is all the better for it in many instances.

Third, and this is a truism for many, policy-makers are continually engaged in politics even those dealing with seemingly technical or legalistic forms of legislation, procedural protocols, or institution-building that are backstage to the hot topics of policy-making at any given time. Recent history is full of lessons about how policy-makers make a difference in the halls of political – national and international – power. For activists or researchers who set out on the institutional-change route, this decision to take a ‘reformist’ approach then has to eschew the public gaze, headline news of the day. It also asks for time, energy and commitment and a devotion to the long term. It also means leaving behind cherished notions of independent thought, a degree of autonomy, and that much maligned space away from it all that enables ‘critical thought’ and ‘rigorous research’ to take place. Again, it is Catch-22 except this time in redux; damned if you do, and damned if you do too.

So, should we all subject ourselves to an extreme makeover session, and transform ourselves into policy activists? I shall leave this Platonic question open.

Marianne Franklin is Senior Reader & Convener of the Transnational Communications and Global Media Postgraduate Program at Goldsmiths (UK). With a background in the Humanities (History & Music) and Social Sciences (Politics), she has held teaching and research positions in several countries. On the 2008 executive of the ISA’s International Communications section, she has served as Section Chair and Vice-Chair / Programme Chair of the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Section. On several international editorial boards, and one of the founding co-editors of the RIPE Series in Global Political Economy (Routledge), she is currently editor of the series Key Thinkers: Past and Present for Information, Communication, and Society.

References

Appadurai, Arjan, 2002, ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’ in The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader, J. X. Inda & R. Rosaldo (Eds). Massachusetts/Oxford: Blackwell: 46-64

  Ashton-Warner, Sylvia, 1963, Teacher. London: Secker & Warburg

Benhabib, S. & Cornell, D (Eds.), 1987, Feminism as Critique. Cambridge/Oxford UK: Polity Press

Borradori, Giovanna, 2003, “Fundamentalism and Terror – A Dialogue with Jürgen Habermas” in Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press: 25-43

Braman, S, 2008, “Policy Research in an Evidence-Averse Environment” in IJoC – International Journal of Communication 2 (2008): SSRC Special Feature, pp 433-449. See SSRC Essay Forum: Making Communications Research Matter: http://essays.ssrc.org/mcrm/?p=12 (8 November 2008)

Chomsky, Noam, 1997, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda. New York: Seven Stories Press.

Foucault, Michel, 1984, “Interview: Polemics, Politics and Problematizations”, an interview with Paul Rabinow. Available at http://foucault.info/foucault/interview.html: (10 November 2008)

Freire, Paulo, 2000 (1970), Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.

Hartmann, Heidi, 1981, “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union” in L. Sargent (Ed.), Women and Revolution: A Discussion of the Unhappy Marriage between Marxism and Feminism. Boston: South End Press: 1- 42

Illich, Ivan, 1971, Deschooling Society. New York: Harper and Row

Karaganis, Joe, Monroe Price, & Stefaan Verhulst, 2008, ‘Introduction’ in Making Communications Matter. SSRC Essay Forum: http://essays.ssrc.org/mcrm/?p=4. (10 November 2008)

Latour, Bruno, 2007, Beware, Your Imagination Leaves Digital Traces. The Times Higher Education Supplement, 6 April 2007. Available at http://www.bruno-latour.fr/presse/presse_art/P-129-THES.html: (10 November 2008)

Said, Edward W, 1994, Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books

Spivak, Gayatri, 1988, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Cary Nelson & Lawrence Grossberg (Eds.). Urbana: University of Illinois Press

About the notes: These notes are for some concrete examples, lived-experience illustrations of these ruminations; self-contained narratives in themselves.

Introduction

I was once quoted in a magazine article saying that I never wanted to attend a conference again if it didn’t involve power tools.  At the time, I was likely holding a soldering iron in my hand.  In my ideal world I would have the time, resources and commitment to be a  scholar, a policy advocate, and a community media volunteer.  In reality of course my interventions vary in their efficacy. 

What I do take away from these experiences of helping build (literally) community radio stations with the Prometheus Radio Project and train volunteer producers is what I hope to be a deeper understanding of what goes into building and sustaining independent, not for profit media; what some of the practical research needs are related to increased pressure from funders to measure impact (as well as a desire to better understand one’s audiences and communities being served); and a desire to see the sector grow and evolve.  The question is how can I translate this into meaningful research.

Background: Low Power Movement and Policy-making

The movement for Low Power FM Radio (LPFM) in the United States in the was fought and won by activists with groups like Prometheus and what was then the Microradio Empowerment Coalition with little if any academic research to draw on for support.  Many case studies and scholarly pieces have been written about the success of stations on air and the model of communities coming together to collectively build their own stations pioneered by Prometheus called “Radio Barnraisings.” 

At the same time as authors have derided Congressional legislation that blocked implementation of the LPFM service in approximately 75% of the country at the behest of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and surprisingly National Public Radio (NPR) on disproven  (see FCC engineering and Congressionally mandated MITRE studies) grounds of broadcast interference, few have produced the research low power radio advocates sought to demonstrate the community value and benefit to localism while they continue to labor eight years later to have the legislation overturned. 

The impact of pirate radio on debates around concentration of media ownership also went under-acknowledged in the academy for many years. In this exploratory essay, I will attempt to address some of the challenges and opportunities I have encountered through my research and efforts at intervening in the policy making process.  In doing so, I will divide this piece into three distinct sections with the aim of identify some key sites for policy intervention related to community media; explore efforts to develop research methodologies that better reflect the kinds of media under investigation; and conclude with some informal findings of suggestions from advocacy groups as to research needs for the field. 

Researching Community Media Policy: Balancing Acts

My research is focussed broadly on community media policy and practice, especially as it relates to media democracy, pluralism and localism. I am concluding a multi-year study of community media policies in Europe, and the role of advocacy groups and civil society in moving forward agendas for community media policy.  I am also examining the issue of sustainability in community media and recently contributed to an Internews-produced handbook on the subject.  It is exciting to be part of a growing and dynamic field. 

At the same time, I recognize the need for scholarship that addresses the policy and practical needs, as well as research that pushes the theoretical landscape of what it means to talk about community media and why, in an era defined by globalization, transnational networks and rapid technological  innovation is there is a resurgence in one hundred year old analogue, local radio?  Clearly social needs are driving the uses of technological as much as they are mutually reinforcing.  But how to balance the conceptual impulse with the desire to produce timely research related to policy concerns in a system where academic rewards such as tenure are driven by scholarly publication in peer reviewed journals that operate on a timeline different from the more immediate needs of policy advocacy?

Opportunities for Policy Intervention in Europe – Multi-stakeholder Approaches

Community broadcasting has developed asymetrically around the world – and across Europe – at different times and under different conditions. There are countries with well-established sectors for community radio and television; there are countries with either no legal or enabling environment for community media or countries where community media operate in dangerous or hostile environments; and there are countries that fall somewhere in between (for example, where there exist opportunities for licensing but no means for stations to support themselves financially, or countries where there exist a few strong stations that are supported by international aid agencies but with no means of self-sufficiency). 

However, recognition of community media as a formal ‘third sector’ of broadcasting (alongside public and private broadcasting) is gaining momentum and pressure is being exhorted from community organizers, international aid agencies and policy advocates.  UNESCO and the World Bank Institute have supportive positions on community media as an important site for citizen engagement and cultural practice. The European policy agenda increasingly recognizes the role of community media, including efforts by both the Council of Europe and the European Parliament to consider development of enabling regulatory frameworks.  The political will to create and protect community media are fundamental to long-term sustainability. 

Breaching the Knowledge Gaps

According to the World Association of Community Broadcasters (French acronym AMARC), the lack of proper enabling legislation is the single largest barrier to community media’s social impact and sustainability.  The lack of a cohesive policies across Europe related to community broadcasting is compounded with regards to digitalization, in large part because there has also been an uneven development of digital radio itself, including across Europe.

As part of this research, I co-ordinated (along with Arne Hintz and Mojca Plansak) an Exploratory Workshop funded by the European Science Foundation to investigate the impact of digitalization and convergence on community broadcasting and consider the gap of policy-related knowledge within the framework of a broader perspective on convergence, communication infrastructure, social and democratic concerns.  The workshop took a multi-stakeholder approach and included academic researchers, station organizers, European policy makers, communication regulators, and NGO leaders and activists, especially people involved with the Community Media Forum Europe (CMFE) and AMARC Europe. 

This mixture of participants was noted as a strength of our funding application and was integral to the success of the workshop. A telling moment came towards the end of the workshop when we were breaking off into working groups on research and policy advocacy which is where the multi-laterialism broke down.  For the most part, the groups self-organized in such a way that the research group was comprised of academics, and the advocacy group of everyone else.  So what does this say?  That practitioners don’t care about research and academics don’t care about implementation?  Perhaps simply that when the rubber meets the road, the function of organizing and designing strategies and methods fell to these divides, but with the aim that each would inform the other.  Also worth noting that only the academics seemed self-conscious of this division.

Emerging Prospects

In Europe, opportunities for policy intervention are taking place and there seem to be positive examples of collaboration in many directions.  As mentioned above, policy makers have shown an interest in participating in workshops on community media research and the Council of Europe recently commissioned scholar Peter Lewis to study the social impact of community media.  The European Parliament also recently commissioned a private research firm to study community media policies across EU member states. 

Although at first scholars were concerned that the commission was not given to an academic institution, the researcher took it upon himself to involve a range of stakeholders in the study.  Additionally, a large EU-funded study to develop indicators for media pluralism across Europe has also provided an important opportunity to further establish community media as one small but significant ingredient for pluralistic media systems.  These efforts at the European level have been instrumental in helping support the development of policy advocacy at the member-state level, especially in the East and South East regions of Europe where there are few examples and licensing of community radio and television.

Digitalization and Convergence: Threats and Opportunities

The transition to digital technologies offers both opportunities and challenges for community broadcasting. With more efficient use of the spectrum, more space is opened up on the radio dial. Changing technologies also opens up room for new regulatory regimes which could open the door for community radio to benefit from the so-called “digital dividend” through set asides for non-profit media.  At the same time, challenges include new gate keepers, market-imperatives driving the debate, a lack of emphasis and research on public interest objectives and consequences. 

For community broadcasting to have a strong future, active policy intervention in support of the sector is needed and the knowledge gap around issues and impact of digitalization must be addressed.  One difficulty is the lack of research methodologies for assessing the impact of digitalization itself beyond the issue of penetration and number of users and devices.  Perhaps this is an area where community media researchers can borrow from public and private media research in adopting methods, or by partnering with industry researchers to include sections related to community media in their existing studies.

Community Media and Research Methodologies

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s measurement for assessing the merits of a station’s application for funding are driven primarily by two criteria:  how many listeners a station has and how much money it raises.  These measurements smack with contradiction to the ways in which the value of community media are seen, both in international, European and African charters and frameworks.  What has been developed elsewhere are research methods that

Especially in the field of community media research, there are also calls to move beyond case studies and seek to produce relevant quantitative research, especially that related to impact assessment.  At the same time, there are important ongoing investigations into developing research methodologies that better reflect the values of community media, such as queries by researchers like Jo Tacchi, Birgitte Jallov, and Clemencia Rodriguez and Amparo Cadavid (such as participatory action research and Jallov’s Barefoot Impact Assessment). Overall, there is an expressed need for more studies – both quantitative and qualitative that address sustainability and social impact of community media.  

Challenges

This brings me to one of the many challenges I face as a scholar engaged in policy research that seeks to have a positive impact on social change.  As the field of community media research continues to grow, academics are playing an increasingly vital role on providing valuable research, and opportunities for multi-stakeholder collaborations.  This is a very positive development.  The challenge is what could get – if not lost – at least given a backseat – is the critical evaluation of the growth and phenomenon of community media.

My theoretical background is grounded in alternative media studies.  This is a field that itself is stagnating from a critical standpoint at the same time as there has been a welcomed explosion of fascinating case studies.  Literature in the first half of the 00′s was defined by an almost defensive tone of having to both  justify that alternative media was an important field and criticising media and cultural studies for failing to adequately take seriously the historical persistence and geographical pervasiveness of radical alternative media. 

Alternative Media – Moving Forward

The topic of alternative media is all the more critical in light of encroaching media conglomeration and consolidation.  The field was dramatically moved forward through the work of John Downing , Clemencia Rodriguez  and Chris Atton, whose works have helped define the field around debates of citizen participation, radical social movements and alternative practice.  Nick Couldry and James Curran weighed in on the value of this media to contest the dominant sites of media power. However, few studies since then have moved the field forward at a conceptual level, despite important interventions in tactical and autonomous media.  One short but significant essay by Downing seeks to push the normative position of alternative media studies in which he rightly raises concern over the dirth of audience studies and how little is known about the consumption of alternative media.

It’s my guess that many academics working on community media research were either heavily influenced or at least informed by this field of studies, but perhaps civil society advocates not as much since these theoretical debates took place largely within academic journals, texts and conferences.  Gabi Hadl recently launched an innovative forum for  a selected group of scholars to think through these issues called the Civil Society Media Policy Consortium with the express attempt to offer ‘civil society media’ as a framework for conceptualizing participatory media. 

Even the Our Media/ Nuestros Medios network –one of the most important spaces for alternative and community media researchers to connect, and itself organized as a forum to bring together academics, practitioners, activists and advocates – is looking to incorporate some critical roundtable discussions at its next conference with the aim of moving the field forward (full disclosure – I am helping co-organize these efforts).  

Seduced by Community Media?

Perhaps many of us who started on this path have been seduced by community media (!)  The field offers a more defined set of practices and frameworks than alternative media as concept, it is perhaps where many of us have and do participate in as volunteers, and moreover, it offers explicit avenues for policy intervention.  Thus, for engagement with both theory and policymaking, it offers the best of both worlds, so to speak.  My point here is to raise the issue that we need also be mindful of the role and value of critical theory and inquiry.

The last decade has produced substantive scholarship that well-places alternative and community media on the media studies landscape as well as in the media policy environment.  The defensive positioning that our work matters is thing of the past.  What is at stake is to move forward in our intellectual curiosity about why these citizen-based and participatory media matter, what is at stake, and what do the shifting tensions, definitions and practices have to tell us about the world.

Conclusion

By way of a conclusion, the following findings are culled from a workshop session entitled Global Context and Connections: The Transnational Relevance of Our Work co-convened by Becky Lentz and I as part of the SSRC’s Necessary Knowledge for a Democratic Society conference at Annenberg in early 2008. The aim was to articulate research needs and challenges that would better enable the work of advocacy groups and better foster collaborations between advocacy organizations and academic researchers. 

In order to have an impact on policy making, academic researchers need to be able the need to be able write for different audiences from academic journals, popular pieces and civil society handbooks; to produce quality research with quicker turnaround times than those within academic publishing since advocacy groups have immediate knowledge needs and require non-static resources, including access to academic research and resources (even things like Lexus nexus access); help support transnational collaboration, comparative studies;  source materials form other countries (to this end I should mention the Media Law Assistance website being developed by the Center for Global Communication Studies at Annenberg); case studies, strategies and tactics employed elsewhere; and tools for identifying knowledge needs and knowledge gaps.

Kate Coyer is post-doctoral research fellow with the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the Center for Media and Communication Studies at Central European University (CEU). In addition to teaching at CEU during the spring term, during her fellowship at Annenberg, she conducted a comparative study of community broadcasting policies among European Union member countries, with specific focus on Central and Eastern Europe. Kate has taught at the University of California, Berkeley and Goldsmiths College, University of London where she received her PhD in Media and Communications. She has been producing radio and organizing media campaigns for the past twenty years and has helped build community radio stations in the U.S. and Tanzania. Her recent publications include Handbook of Alternative Media (Routledge 2007, co-authored with Tony Dowmunt and Alan Fountain), a media policy brief in Global Media and Communications, and chapters in Global Media, Global Activism (Pluto 2005), and News Incorporated: Corporate Media Ownership and its Threat to Democracy (Prometheus 2005).

In this essay, we assume-perhaps too broadly-that research is useful for policy formations and ask, rather, why engage in comparative research? And because of our own work, we focus on comparative research concerning media law and policy. Comparisons can lead to fresh, exciting insights and a deeper understanding of issues that are of central concern in different countries. They can identify gaps in knowledge and policies and may point to possible directions that could be followed, directions that previously may have been unknown to observers or, in the case of media law, legal reformers.

Comparisons may also help to sharpen the focus of analysis of the subject under study by suggesting new perspectives.

Comparative media law research can give us a better understanding of how one country, or even medium, borrows from the traditions and conventions of another (such as the links between film and broadcasting, the PSB models within Europe, free speech notions in Latin American countries); how intellectual property migrates across various media over time; and where best practices exist in the world for the regulation of new communications technologies. Moreover, comparative research can give us an improved knowledge as to whether specific media patterns and structures are causally conditioned by social, political, economic, historical and geographic circumstances. Without a conscious effort, however, comparisons can be mangled, inadequate, often a disservice. (…)

The full essay online:

IJoC – International Journal of Communication 2 (2008)

In an ideal world, uncontaminated by partisanship and political agendas, academic researchers have much-needed qualifications and skills that can contribute to rational decision-making by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). By law, the FCC has to combine its in-house expertise with a transparent and complete collection of evidence when establishing rules, regulations and policies. Sadly, the FCC’s “Notice and Comment” rulemaking proceedings rarely include filings from academic researchers lacking financial sponsorship from a stakeholder with the resources and incentives to steer the Commission to a preferred outcome. Absent a financial incentive, both tenured and tenure track professors eschew policy advocacy, largely because such efforts have little influence on the FCC and also generate limited recognition as academic contributions.

This essay will consider whether and how academic researchers might achieve a greater impact even when the FCC displays an inherent bias toward results-driven decision-making. With increasing regularity, the FCC generates and seeks empirical data that supports preferred or preordained policies.

For example, the Commission established a low bit rate threshold to support the conclusion that robust high-speed broadband competition exists in the United States. The Commission also sought to demonstrate that à la carte access to cable television programming would foist higher costs on consumers, but later reversed its position possibly because of reassessment of the political liabilities from its initial findings.

Additionally, stakeholders happily support the Commission’s agenda by sponsoring academic and consultant research and by submitting advocacy documents masquerading as rigorous in-house, academic or third party research. (…)

The full essay online:

IJoC – International Journal of Communication 2 (2008)

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considered by Congress and courts to be an “expert” agency and is tasked with a wide range of decisions that rely on expertise in engineering, economics and statutory construction. This presumed expertise allows courts to grant “deference” to the agency’s decisions. In appeals of FCC decisions, the adage that applies is, “Tie goes to the FCC.”

On engineering matters, this often makes the most sense. The FCC’s engineers can use field or predicted measurements to decide, for example, if two radio stations will interfere or two satellites are too close to each other. And, unless the judge’s law clerk or the judge has the avidity or expertise to look into the results, it’s unlikely that the FCC’s decision would be disturbed on appeal.

Similarly, on some but not all interpretive technical policy issues, the FCC judgment won’t be disturbed. In recent years, courts have deferred to such matters as what rate to charge a cable company when it attaches to a utility pole to provide high speed data service, how to define cable modem service, or whether to prohibit integrated security in set-top boxes to promote a retail market for cable boxes.

Where economics are involved, the FCC has been granted less deference. Ownership limits set by the FCC have been tossed out, with a series of Goldilocks-like decisions that decree some limits too high, some too low. These include how many subscribers a single cable operator can control (court said too low); how many program networks that a cable operator carries it can also own (too low); whether a broadcaster can also own a newspaper (pending); or limits to the number of stations one broadcaster can control (too high). (…)

The full essay online:

IJoC – International Journal of Communication 2 (2008)

My research focuses on issues of public service broadcasting (PSB) and public culture and media generally, and includes major studies in the last decade of the BBC and Channel 4, the two main British public service broadcasters, the UK television industry, and digital television and convergence. I researched and wrote the first independent inside study of the BBC as an organization, an ethnography based on two years’ fieldwork mainly in BBC television in the late 1990s with updates to 2004, which is combined with wider historical and contemporary analysis of the industry and of media politics in the UK in this period.

On the basis of my research, I have occasionally managed in the last decade to move into policy-related work and advisory and consultancy roles with government, the PSBs, and major cultural bodies, although with difficulty, as the following will show. Although my experience no doubt stems from the nature of my research, which analyses critically the effects of the neo-liberal economic reforms that have swept over the British media and Britain’s public sector institutions – including the BBC – in recent decades, it forms part of a larger set of developments concerning academics’ capacity to intervene in policy debates. This wider story is of the growing ambivalence of public and private bodies to academic involvement in policy, of the waning public profile and legitimacy of academic research, of the closure of channels previously available to academics for communicating policy-relevant findings in the press and political weeklies, and of a degradation of the quality of analysis and understanding in these outlets. (…)

The full essay online:

IJoC – International Journal of Communication 2 (2008)

I joined the Working Group on Internet Governance with very low expectations of how my input would be received. The reason is simple: this was a Group that was to deliver a report on a very sensitive (read “political”) area of the Internet. Where the urban legend said the Internet could not be regulated or controlled, this Group would say that there is a chokepoint in the hands of one government-appointed entity. I saw the recommendations as giving a selection of ammunition to the diplomats and their ilk to pick and choose. At the end of it all, however, I am pleased to say that my expectations have been more than met, and not just because they were set low. Perhaps because the subject matter is new. Perhaps because governments did lack expertise and thus had no choice but to look to the Group for help. Or perhaps it was because the report did make sense. Whatever the “real” reasons, I found that diplomats and their ilk were prepared to and did indeed listen. (…)

The full article online:

IJoC – International Journal of Communication 2 (2008)

It has been a characteristic of the modern state ever since the French Revolution to favor evidence-based policymaking. Indeed, the word “statistics” refers to the interplay between the development of research methods and the uses of those methods by governments. But the nature of the state, and of knowledge production, and of state-society relations, have all continued to evolve. Unfortunately – but hopefully not necessarily – the current expression of the informational state (Braman, 2006) in the United States is evidence-averse policymaking. Recent inversions of the legal system have brought about a loss of innocence regarding the relationship between policymaking and the facts and about the relative efficacy of governmental processes as described by their formal outlines. It is now clear that those who hope that the results of their research will be used to influence the conditions of our lives must deal not only with government (the formal laws, decision-making processes, organizations, and programs of geopolitically recognized governments), but also with governance (the formal and informal rules, practices, decision-making procedures, and institutions of private and public actors that have structural effects) and governmentality (the cultural habits and predispositions out of which modes of governance and government arise, and by which they are sustained). (…)

The full essay online:

IJoC – International Journal of Communication 2 (2008)