McGannon Center Working Paper Series

THE RATIONALIZATION OF AUDIENCE UNDERSTANDING

Philip M. Napoli — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:32:17 PST

This paper reviews the literature that has examined how media organizations make sense of their audiences, the analytical techniques and technologies employed, and how this information is embraced or resisted in the operation of media organizations. As this review illustrates, the historical trend in audience understanding has been one of a steady process of rationalization in how media organizations have approached their audiences. In documenting this process of the rationalization of audience understanding, this review identifies key historical moments in this process. This review identifies the external forces that have influenced this process; the underlying reasons for it; and critiques of its effects on the production, distribution, and exhibition of media content.

REVISITING “MASS COMMUNICATION” AND THE “WORK” OF THE AUDIENCE IN THE NEW MEDIA ENVIRONMENT

Philip M. Napoli — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:30:53 PST

This paper revisits the concept of mass communication, which has faced persistent challenges to its continued relevance in light of changes that have taken place in the media environment. This paper offers a counterpoint to claims of the term’s diminished relevance, as well as to some recent efforts to reposition the term, by putting forth an interpretive approach that is not exclusive to the “institutional communicator” and that allows the term “mass” to extend to both the senders and receivers of messages. This paper argues that this interpretive approach is in keeping with some early interpretations of the concept’s meaning, and that such an interpretation is viable in light of the definitional ambiguity that has always surrounded the term. This paper then considers how the notion of the “work” of the audience is reconfigured in this new mass communication environment. As this paper illustrates, the claim of the audience engaging in ‘watching as working’ merits extension in an environment of interactive media and user-generated content.

POLICIES OF INERTIA OR INNOVATION? EUROPEAN PUBLIC SERVICE IN TRANSITION FROM PSB TO PSM

Minna Aslama — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:29:29 PST

TOWARD A FEDERAL DATA AGENDA FOR COMMUNICATIONS POLICYMAKING

Philip M. Philip et al. — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 08:54:34 PDT

Public Interest Media Activism and Advocacy as a Social Movement: A Review of the Literature

Philip M. Napoli — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:47:50 PDT

This report examines the academic literature focused on public interest media and communications activism and advocacy within the U.S. and abroad (labeled, in the name of brevity, the “media reform” movement throughout this report). This report first seeks to outline the parameters of the movement under consideration, in terms of the primary conceptual frames employed, outcomes pursued, and strategic approaches. As this section illustrates, the media reform movement is characterized by a diverse array of conceptual frames (ranging from “media reform” to “media justice” to “communication rights” to “media democracy”), and a hesitancy at this point to coalesce around a single unifying frame. The movement is similarly diverse in terms of its outcome priorities and in terms of the strategic approaches employed by its various member organizations. The second section of the report charts the origins and evolution of the research in this field. As this section illustrates, over time the analytical approach that scholars have brought to the topic increasingly has adopted a social movement theory perspective. The third section considers the media reform movement as a social movement, identifying key recurring themes in the literature related to the interaction between media reform and other social movements, to the relationship between social movements and the media, and to the organization and performance of the organizations driving the media reform movement. As this section illustrates, media reform is unique in the extent to which its goals can facilitate the success of other social movements, but also is uniquely hampered by the extent to which traditional mainstream media are motivated to deny press coverage to media reform. This section also highlights some of the most common critiques leveled at the media reform movement, ranging from a lack of coordination and collaboration between groups, to a lack of a strong nation-wide constituency, to a primarily reactive orientation toward policy issues. The concluding section summarizes the key findings of the report and offers a series of recommendations related to strategic approaches for the movement and to avenues for future research.

Media Policy: An Overview of the Field

Philip M. Napoli — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:47:50 PDT

Media Policy: An Overview of the Field

Philip M. Napoli — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:47:49 PDT

Research on media technologies frequently has illustrated the tendency for new media to adopt the structural and content characteristics of established mass media. This historical pattern is the outgrowth of a confluence of a wide range of economic and institutional forces. This paper considers the impact of hyperlinking within this process of “massification.” This paper explores the mechanisms by which hyperlinking may both facilitate and impede this process and offers conclusions regarding if and how the dynamics of linking may affect the process of media evolution.

Newspaper/Television Cross-Ownership and Local News and Public Affairs Programming on Television Stations: An Empirical Analysis

Michael Z. Yan — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:47:48 PDT

This study analyzes the relationship between local newspaper/television cross-ownership and the presence and quantity of local news and local public affairs programming on broadcast television. The analyses, based on a two-week constructed random sample of television programming in 2003 for 226 randomly selected, plus 27 cross-owned television stations, show that cross-owned stations did not broadcast more local news than non-cross owned stations that also provided local news. In addition, cross-ownership had no significant relationship with either the presence or the quantity of local public affairs programming on commercial television.

PARADOXES OF MEDIA POLICY ANALYSIS: IMPLICATIONS FOR PUBLIC INTEREST MEDIA REGULATION

Philip M. Napoli — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:41:38 PDT

DIVERSITY AS AN EMERGING PRINCIPLE OF INTERNET GOVERNANCE

Philip M. Napoli — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:41:36 PDT

This paper investigates the ongoing emergence of diversity as a guiding normative principle of Internet governance. This paper starts from the premise that principles play a fundamental role in the development and implementation of any regulatory regime, but that the communications policymaking process historically has suffered from ambiguous and sometimes contradictory conceptualizations of its guiding principles, and from such principles functioning more as rhetorical devices to be exploited by stakeholder groups rather than as analytical tools to be used by policymakers. This paper provides a comparative analysis of the conceptualization and application of the diversity principle in traditional mass media regulation with its developing conceptualization and application in the realm of Internet governance. This paper illustrates the centrality if linguistic diversity to the principle’s emerging articulation in the realm of Internet governance. This paper then considers how on-line diversity policy research is evolving in relation to the traditional media diversity literature.

TOWARD A MODEL OF AUDIENCE EVOLUTION: NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF MEDIA AUDIENCES

Philip M. Napoli — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:41:35 PDT

This paper proposes and develops a model of audience evolution. The concept of audience evolution in this case refers to the notion that the dominant framework employed by media industry stakeholders (content producers, distributors, advertisers, media buyers, etc.) to conceptualize the audience evolves in response to environmental changes. These environmental changes primarily involve technological changes that simultaneously transform the dynamics of media consumption as well as the dynamics of gathering information on various dimensions of audience behavior. These technological changes also interact with one another, in that the technological changes that affect the dynamics of media consumption also simultaneously provide new means of gathering information on previously umeasurable aspects of audience behavior. These technological changes, and their economic and strategic implications, are then filtered through a process of stakeholder resistance and negotiation, out of which new institutionalized conceptualizations of the media audience emerge. This paper asserts a causal relationship between the decline of traditional exposure metrics and the emergence of alternative conceptualizations of audience behavior. That is, the extent to which the fragmentation of the media environment is undermining the long-institutionalized exposure-focused conceptualization of the audience is creating an environment of exploration of – and receptivity toward – alternative conceptualizations of the audience that are derived from dimensions of audience behavior that are better capturable in today’s increasingly fragmented, increasingly interactive media environment. This pattern suggests that the institutionalized audience is a very malleable construct; something that evolves in response to environmental conditions in order to facilitate the continued functioning of the audience marketplace.

ISSUES AND CHALLENGES FACING INTERNET GOVERNANCE: A REPORT FROM THE 2007 INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM

Philip M. Napoli — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:41:32 PDT

This report examines the 2007 Internet Governance Forum, held in November, 2007 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Internet Governance Forum is a UN-sponsored convening that emerged from the UN’s World Summit on the Information Society. The purpose of the IGF is to provide a multi-stakeholder forum for discussion and debate on the wide range of social, political, and economic issues related to Internet governance. This report first provides background on the events and issues leading up to the creation of the IGF. Next, this report examines the IGF’s mandate and how it has been executed up to this point. This report then explores each of the five main themes around which the IGF was organized (openness, access, security, diversity, and critical Internet resources), with special attention paid to the positions and concerns of the civil society sector. The concluding section summarizes the report’s key observations, offers key points of concern as the IGF process moves forward, and considers potential avenues for future research.

Corporate Governance: The Revival of an Academic, Professional, and Policy Field

Juan P. Artero — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:41:31 PDT

This paper explores the basic concepts of corporate governance in relation to its intellectual foundations and historical development. The basic assumption relies on the fact that the reinforcement of corporate governance as an academic, professional, and policy field is a consequence of the many corporate failures that have occurred in recent years, mainly since 2002. Most theoretical developments for this new moment in history have been borrowed from the same academics and practitioners that reflected and worked on the field after the 1929 economic crash, with deep origin on general social scientific research. In addition, corporate governance is growing as a distinctive business function as well as a set of global prescriptions that impact business activities across industries and cultures. The role of the board of directors and the ideas on power and accountability remain critical issues in the new 21st century corporate governance debates.

Bridging Cultural Policy and Media Policy in the U.S.: Challenges and Opportunities

Philip M. Napoli — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:41:30 PDT

Cultural policy and media policy have remained largely distinct fields of research, policy-making, and policy advocacy in the United States. As a result, there has been relatively little cross-pollination of research findings, methodological tools, or advocacy resources and expertise. There are, however, significant areas of overlap between these two fields. Unfortunately, these areas of overlap have not been fully explored, nor have the potential benefits for researchers, policy advocates, policy-makers, of identifying, building upon, and strengthening these points of overlap been considered.

This paper provides an analytical overview of the media policy and cultural policy literatures, in an effort to bridge these persistent disconnects and to explore the potential benefits of strengthening the ties between media policy and cultural policy. Toward these ends, this paper first outlines the substance and boundaries of the fields of media policy and cultural policy. The next section of the paper explores the commonalities shared by the two fields, in terms of both their substantive concerns and their position within the broader policy-making and policy research landscapes. The third section examines changes in the media and cultural landscapes that appear to be driving a tighter integration of media and cultural policy. The fourth section considers the specific benefits to both media and cultural policy of forging stronger bonds between the two fields. The concluding section outlines some specific mechanisms for developing stronger linkages between media policy and cultural policy.

Necessary Knowledge For Communications Policy: Information Inequalities and Commercial Data Access and Usage in the Policymaking Process

Philip M. Napoli et al. — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:41:27 PDT

Communications policymaking increasingly relies upon large-scale databases manufactured and marketed by commercial organizations. Data providers such as BIA Research, Nielsen Media Research, and Arbitron play a vitally important role in aggregating the data that policymakers, policy analysts, and policy advocates rely upon in policy deliberations. In many ways, these data providers supplement the limited data gathering capacity of government bodies such as the FCC and NTIA and thereby help to bring a greater quantity of relevant data to bear on policy issues than would otherwise be possible. Indeed, these data are utilized extensively by stakeholders with an interest in policy outcomes to conduct and submit studies that policymakers rely upon in their deliberations (often in lieu of conducting such research on their own).

One unfortunate byproduct of this situation, however, is that, to the increasing extent that the data relied upon in policymaking, policy analysis, and policy advocacy are provided by commercial organizations, substantial inequalities in access to these data inevitably arise. Specifically, significant actors in the policymaking process, such as academic researchers and public interest organizations, lack the financial resources of communications firms and industry associations to gain access to the data that are vital to conducting thorough, reliable, and persuasive policy research. Policymakers themselves often find their research objectives inhibited by the enormous expense associated with the relevant large-scale commercial datasets, and thus find themselves increasingly reliant upon the analyses conducted by those stakeholder groups with the resources necessary to gain access to such data. As a result of these information asymmetries, policy decision-making is likely to suffer, as the research inputs inevitably fail to reflect the full range of considerations across the full range of interested stakeholders. This paper illustrates these issues via a case study of the FCC’s 2003 media ownership proceeding and offers suggestions for how the existing disparities in access to policy-relevant data might be addressed.

Consumer Brand Equity of the Media: The Value Perceptions of Professional Media Buyers

Mart Ots et al. — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:41:26 PDT

Brand management has become a key issue for the marketing of media companies. Today, many media firms seek to build up and/or exploit “strong” brands, usually theoretically conceived as brand equity or value. The importance of brand equity in the relationship between media companies and their audiences has become recognized by both practitioners and researchers. So far however, little is known about the effects of this development on media’s other outlets for offerings – the advertising markets. Taking the perspective of media buyers, this paper explores the role of brand equity in the assessment of audience value on advertising markets’ demand side.

Intellectual Scaffolding: On Peter Dahlgren's Theorization of Television and the Public Sphere

Minna Aslama — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:41:25 PDT

In this working paper, my goal is to revisit Habermasian public sphere theory by first discussing its strengths and weaknesses in the context of today’s (western European) television landscape. I then move on to exploring one reconceptualization of television as a public sphere, that of the Swedish scholar Peter Dahlgren (1995 & 2005). Finally, I elaborate and further develop those key aspects of Dahlgren’s model that I consider particularly relevant for rethinking the public sphere of today.

The Diversity Challenge: Changing Television Markets and Public Service Programming in Finland, 1993-2004

Minna Aslama — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:41:24 PDT

Ownership Concentration and Indecency: Is There a Link?

Jonathan Rintels et al. — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:41:23 PDT

Access to Audiences as a First Amendment Right: Its Relevance and Implications for Electronic Media Policy

Philip M. Napoli et al. — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:41:21 PDT

When the issue of speakers’ rights of access arises in media regulation and policy contexts, the focus typically is on the concept of speakers’ rights of access “to the media,” or “to the press.” This right usually is premised on the audience’s need for access to diverse sources and content. In contrast, in many non-mediated contexts, the concept of speakers’ rights of access frequently is defined in terms of the speaker’s own First Amendment right of access to audiences. This paper explores the important distinctions between these differing interpretations of a speaker’s access rights and argues that the concept of a speaker’s right of access to audiences merits a more prominent position in electronic media regulation and policy. This paper then explores the implications of such a shift in perspective for media regulation and policy-making.