Assuming that crucial public services should not be left entirely to market-driven forces, American policymakers attempted to establish safeguards for news media. An examination of conflicting narratives within postwar policy debates suggests that the US evaded this path largely because of a concerted backlash—often in the form of red-baiting—encouraged by threatened newspaper and broadcast industries. Many lessons, parallels, and forgotten antecedents for current American media policy can be drawn from the postwar 1940s. Thus, it is instructive to explore how these earlier debates were framed, particularly in response to what might be referred to as ‘‘market failure.’’ Given the worsening journalism crisis and other persistent media policy challenges, this analysis of market failure holds much contemporary relevance.

As we enter the second decade of the 21st Century, we find ourselves at a rare historical moment—a time of great opportunity fraught with substantial pitfalls. Numerous potential trajectories of the Internet may unfold before us. While decentralized and participatory platforms have birthed a revived move- ment for democratized media production, these phenomena depend on the common resource of the Internet; common not in ownership of the integrated networks, but in non-discriminatory access and use of the network. However, as markets evolve, there is a growing uncertainty that policy decisions sur- rounding the Internet will benefit the general public. Even as social networking and media production have empowered users, less visible structural changes threaten to foreclose many of the Internet’s democratic possibilities. Despite the popularity and political power of innovative services like YouTube, Face- book, and Twitter, structural changes threaten to foreclose many of the Inter- net’s democratic possibilities. Furthermore, recent developments in digital rights management (“DRM”), net neutrality, and user privacy reveal unprece- dented attacks on basic Internet freedoms.

Drawing from archival research, I historicize current media policies and reform efforts by analyzing the 1940s critical juncture when policymakers, social movements, and communication industries grappled over commercial media’s role in a democratic society. By focusing on policy formations around the Hutchins Commission and the FCC’s ‘‘Blue Book,’’ I propose that a suppressed media reform movement resulted in a ‘‘postwar settlement’’ marked by three assumptions: media should remain self-regulated, practice social responsibility, and be protected by a negative freedom of the press. This social contract consolidated an industry-friendly arrangement that contained reform movements, foreclosed on alternative models, discouraged structural critiques of the U.S. media system, and privileged media owners’ rights over those of the public’s — a relationship that continues today.

While many policy analysts have focused on the fate of the 700 MHz auctions, the digital TV transition, and the promise of white space devices, a more vast and underutilized resource has gone largely unnoticed: government spectrum. The best available data suggests that the majority of federal spectrum capacity is left unused. Strategic reuse of this spectrum could help obviate the need for significant additional reallocation while enabling a wide range of creative new uses and social benefits. Based on what little information is publicly available, it is reasonable to assume that the repurposing of government spectrum would go far in addressing a number of access-related communication problems. Repurposing currently unused U.S. government-controlled spectrum for opportunistic unlicensed use would benefit society by dramatically expanding access to high-speed broadband and increasing the pace of wireless technology innovation. This approach to spectrum policy presents a “third option” for reform, drawing from both the commons and property rights models of spectrum management.

The meteoric rise of network neutrality’s prominence as a crucial Internet policy debate has led to current events far outpacing theoretical and historical analyses. This paper addresses this lag in scholarship by contextualizing recent events in relation to historical telecommunications antecedents. In doing so, we critically evaluate the current network neutrality debate and offer a set of technical and policy guidelines for a new, more broadly defined network neutrality. Specifically, we submit that beyond redefining network neutrality, we must connect issues usually dealt with separately – issues that are actually a subset of one overarching concern: Internet freedom. We conclude with an exploration of the social and political impacts of this broader conception of network neutrality and suggest that this “new network neutrality” provides a proactive foundation for supporting the goal of creating a more open and participatory Internet.

The author proposes that any account seeking to contextualize crucial policy debates con- nected to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) must engage with two necessary projects. First, it must historicize WSIS in relation to an earlier international forum similarly focused on global communications policy, the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO). Second, it must theorize WSIS in terms related to neoliberalism, the dominant political economic system defining global relations today. This analysis brings into focus both continuities and changes in global communications policy during the formative period of the past three decades.

This study examines the radical democratic principles manifest in Indymedia’s discursive, technical, and institutional practices. By focusing on a case study of the Seattle Independent Media Center and contextualizing it within theories and critiques of radical democracy, this article fleshes out strengths, weaknesses, and recurring tensions endemic to Indymedia’s internet-based activism. These findings have important implications for alternative media making and radical politics in general.

Binary communications represent the world as a place of polar opposites. Such conceptions of reality, although not uncommon in Western thought, take on a heightened importance when political leaders employ them in a concerted, strate- gic discourse in a mass media environment. With this in mind, this research offers a conception of binary discourse and uses this as a foundation to examine (a) the use of binaries by U.S. President George W. Bush in 15 national addresses, from his inauguration in January 2001 to commencement of the Iraq War in March 2003, and (b) the responses of editorials in 20 leading U.S. newspapers to the president’s communications.