Abstract
This article offers a definition of media policy and, through a discussion of specific areas of public policy, describes the scope of media policy as an area of potential government intervention. I argue for a more expansive conceptualization of media policy than has typically guided the work of 21st-century media policymakers. I also argue that there has been a troubling tendency to apply a technology policy framework to contexts that would be better served by a media policy analytical framework. The result has been a neglect of core media policy principles that are focused on cultivating an informed citizenry and ensuring that communities’ information needs are being met.
In this volume of The ANNALS, we consider the legacy of a significant and forward-looking media policy inquiry (Waldman and Working Group on the Information Needs of Communities 2011) and explore the issues and concerns that this inquiry brought to the fore. At the outset, it is worth reflecting on and clarifying a broader question that I am asked with surprising frequency: exactly what is media policy? Sometimes this question arises out of pure unfamiliarity with the field and its associated concerns. Other times, it reflects an effort to distinguish between related and/or intersecting policy domains, with the nature of the overlap and intersection between media policy and technology policy being a particularly timely and important case in point. Hopefully, my effort to answer the question, “What is media policy?” can provide useful context for the other contributions to this volume.
With these aims in mind, this article delineates not only what media policy has been but also what it should be. Indeed, the domain of media policy is a contested space, with differing interpretations of how broadly—or how narrowly—the field should be defined. How these parameters are defined has tremendous implications for the extent to which policymakers are empowered to tackle today’s most pressing challenges related to ensuring that communities’ critical information needs are being met.
The answer to the question, “What is media policy?” depends to some degree on how broadly or narrowly one defines “media” and to what extent one thinks technological changes have effectively addressed the policy goals that have traditionally guided media policymakers. These goals include, but are not limited to, preserving/promoting competition, ensuring the availability of a diversity of viewpoints, and ensuring that at least some content providers operate under some reasonably defined notion of serving the public interest.
My primary goal here is to advocate for a particular interpretive approach to media policy—one that can effectively be brought to bear on the challenges and opportunities present in our contemporary digital media landscape. Specifically, this article pushes back against contemporary tendencies to limit the parameters of media policy to traditional “mass media.” In doing so, I explore what exactly the term “media” in media policy has meant and should mean in this digital age. An overarching theme of this article is that technological changes have created conditions and (mis)perceptions that have tended to draw policymakers’ focus away from core media policy issues and concerns—a pattern that helps to explain some of the dilemmas currently confronting our media and information ecosystem.
The Contested Meaning and Scope of Media Policy
The parameters of media policy are contested territory. This section explores some of these contested notions of what is—and what is not—media policy. As a starting point for this exercise, I begin with a consideration of the term “media.” Media is one of those terms that we often presume has a clear, shared meaning, but the reality is more complicated. It is perhaps telling that the Oxford Encyclopedia of Communication (Nussbaum, n.d.) contains 52 entries with the term “media” in the title (e.g., “media literacy,” “media ownership, “media systems,” etc.) but no entry focused on explicating the term “media” on its own.
The complexity alluded to above has to do with how broadly or how narrowly we conceptualize the term—particularly within the context of policymaking. This conceptual flexibility is reflected in the two definitions offered by the Oxford English Dictionary:
“The main means of mass communication (broadcasting, publishing, and the internet) regarded collectively”
“Plural form of medium” (with the most relevant definition of medium being “a means by which something is communicated or expressed”)
The second definition is far too broad, because any means by which something is communicated or expressed satisfies it. Our approach to media policy is not (nor should it be) determined by something that ambiguously far-reaching.
The first, much narrower definition provides a useful starting point for considering different interpretive approaches to the contours of media policy. In this definition, the notion of “media” is explicitly tied to the process of mass communication—and thus the notion of “mass media.” Although closer to how the parameters of media policy have traditionally been conceptualized (as will be discussed), this definition is nonetheless problematically narrow.
Within this definitional framework, we are talking primarily about the traditional media of mass communication, such as broadcast radio and television and newspapers. From a policymaking standpoint, however, print media have operated largely outside the purview of policymakers. A distinctive characteristic of U.S. media policymaking is that the extent to which the government can intervene in the structure and operation of a particular medium is a function of both the technological characteristics of that medium and the extent to which those characteristics are associated with greater or lesser degrees of First Amendment freedom (for a detailed discussion, see Napoli and Graf 2021). This is a can of worms that I will not open here, but the key takeaway is that the print media—which operate independently of government-granted licenses (i.e., broadcasting) or government-granted rights-of-way (e.g., cable/telecom systems)—have enjoyed a degree of First Amendment protection that has largely prevented the kind of government interventions that we have seen elsewhere. The resulting irony is that, as the U.S. newspaper industry collapsed under dramatic technological and economic changes (Sullivan 2020), the notion that the government should perhaps play some role in stabilizing and revitalizing the industry did not become a serious point of policy deliberation (see, e.g., Waldman 2020, 2021) until this sector had become a shell of what it once was.
The definition of media above includes the Internet, though it is important to recognize that the extent to which Internet-related policies fall within the framework of media policy has been a point of contention. It is worth noting, for instance, that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)—the government agency with authority over “mass media” such as radio and television—has fairly consistently sought to place the Internet outside of the bounds of its regulatory authority. The FCC produced an entire report dedicated to congratulating itself for not extending its authority to the Internet during its early days, despite having many opportunities to do so (Oxman 1999).
More recently, the FCC’s on-again, off-again (depending on the party in power) oversight of network neutrality (the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally by service providers, without preference for particular content or services) has hinged upon whether the provision of Internet access is interpreted to fit within the scope of the agency’s authority (Linebaugh 2022). In other words, is Internet access a telecommunications service (over which the FCC does have regulatory authority), or is it an information service (over which it does not)?
To further complicate matters, the regulation of the Internet purely as a telecommunications service essentially ignores the extent to which it has evolved into something closer to an electronic media service (e.g., broadcast, cable, satellite tv/radio), with the cable industry becoming the primary provider of home broadband Internet access. Media services are overseen by a completely different bureau within the FCC from those that oversee telecommunications services.
This situation is indicative of a broad tendency in which policy related to communications technologies that do not fit neatly into the traditional “mass media” paradigm have tended to be categorized under other policy terminologies, such as telecommunications policy, information policy, and (more recently) technology policy. Consequently, most policy deliberations having anything to do with the Internet—whether related to issues of the digital divide, network neutrality, data privacy, or digital platform accountability—have been characterized as telecommunications, information, or technology policy issues.
This pattern becomes particularly salient when we consider the technological changes that have affected the media environment over the past four decades. First, with the advent of “narrowcasting” and the subsequent advent of “platforms,” an ever-shrinking portion of our media ecosystem fits within the conventional notions of media policy.
As the media environment grew more “fragmented”—a huge point of focus in 1990s- and 2000s-era media policy discourse and scholarship (see, e.g., Napoli 2003; Neuman 1991)—a key point of deliberation that emerged was whether traditional media policy priorities, such as diversity and competition (Napoli 2001), remained valid (Napoli 2011). For instance, in a media environment of hundreds of cable networks and millions of websites, did it make sense for policymakers to concern themselves anymore with maintaining limits on the ownership of traditional media outlets? Had technology undermined the power and influence of traditional media gatekeepers to an extent that regulating their size and reach was largely irrelevant and perhaps even counterproductive to their continued survival in a more competitive landscape? In a technological environment in which the barriers to entry to producing and disseminating content had been lowered (thanks largely to the Internet), was it necessary for the FCC to maintain its efforts to assure the availability of a diversity of viewpoints? The steady relaxation of media ownership rules over the past four decades (Scherer 2021) makes clear how policymakers answered these questions.
Similarly, as the content options available to media users exploded (thanks to the increase in cable/satellite system channel capacity and the rise of the World Wide Web), did it make sense to continue to mandate various public interest obligations on traditional media outlets and compel them to provide types of content that, presumably, media users would be able to get through some of the many other sources that had become available to them? Here, the dramatic scaling back of public interest obligations for radio and television broadcasters over the past four decades tells us how policymakers answered that question.
And finally, given the extent to which this highly fragmented media environment gave users the ability to construct their own personally tailored media diets, did it make sense to impose the kind of content restrictions that address characteristics such as indecency, bias, and falsity (all points of focus of traditional media regulation) on newer, more fragmented media such as the Internet (Napoli 2019)? Given the evolutionary path we have seen for the Internet, the Supreme Court’s rejection (Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union 1997) of most of the Communications Decency Act (which sought to impose some broadcast-style content regulation on the Internet) once again offers a clear answer: the traditional priorities of media policy had a diminished place in the digital age.
The narrative thus far is one of the decline of “mass media” and the associated deprioritizing of traditional media policy concerns (such as ownership concentration, viewpoint diversity, and limiting the dissemination of harmful/offensive content) within both traditional and newer media contexts. This deprioritization was premised on the assumption that technological changes were inherently capable of achieving the goals that media policies had been designed to achieve.
This deprioritization has been amplified in the digital platform era, though for a different set of reasons. The guiding rhetoric here has been that digital media services—like search engines, social media, and video-streaming platforms—are not media, first and foremost, but rather should be thought of as technologies; and that the companies that provide these services are not media companies but, rather, technology companies (Napoli and Caplan 2017).
Robyn Caplan and I have written extensively on this interpretive framework, its motivations, and its repercussions (Napoli and Caplan 2017). As we discuss, this rhetoric reflects the self-interest of the companies themselves, which reap a variety of benefits from being thought of first and foremost as technology companies while avoiding the kind of professional and regulatory obligations traditionally associated with media companies (Gillespie 2010; Napoli and Caplan 2017). Policymakers have, unfortunately, been all too quick to embrace this mindset, particularly in the face of the tremendous value that these companies have brought to the economy.
I say “unfortunately” for a number of reasons. The first is that this interpretive approach is at odds with reality. Search engines, social media, and streaming platforms are different from traditional mass media in some important ways but incredibly similar in others. Like traditional media, these entities are fundamentally concerned with attracting audience attention by providing content, including news, and monetizing audience attention, primarily through advertising (Napoli and Caplan 2017). Many of these platforms have audience sizes that dwarf those of our most dominant traditional mass media at their peak (e.g., the Big Three broadcast networks circa 1975). Today’s dominant social media platforms, such as Facebook and TikTok, truly are the modern equivalent of the broadcasters of the 20th century (Napoli 2019), even if the dynamics of how they curate content (employing a publish-then-filter model rather than a filter-than-publish model) are fundamentally different.
Nonetheless, the prevailing standpoint has been that the “mass media” era has become a thing of the past—and, thus, that the policy priorities and principles that characterized mass media policymaking are no longer relevant. This perspective has proven to be particularly misguided (Napoli 2010). Viral TikTok videos, large-scale social media disinformation campaigns, and digital streaming platforms all irrefutably meet the parameters of “mass media,” even if the nature of how the content is produced and disseminated has changed.
Hindsight is, of course, 20-20, and looking back now, it is easy to see the blind spots in the optimistic, almost utopian, depictions of how the digital age would displace and improve upon the mass media age. Negroponte’s valorization of the impending arrival of the Daily Me (the completely personalized digital news publication) in his 1995 book Being Digital (Negroponte 1995) reads as myopically optimistic from our current vantage point, in which we have witnessed the politically and even physically damaging effects of filter bubbles and echo chambers, as reflected in events such as the January 6, 2021, insurrection and the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, a decade after Negroponte’s work, influential books like Benkler’s (2006) Wealth of Networks and Shirky’s (2011) Cognitive Surplus heralded the arrival of a glorious new era of decentralized and democratized content creation—an era that we now recognize has been tainted by the way so many content creators have taken advantage of the publish-then-filter model to pollute the media ecosystem with disinformation and hate speech (Napoli 2019).
This disconnect between perception and reality can lead only to misguided policy responses or, as has been the case in this context, nonresponses (Napoli 2021b). From this standpoint, if there is one defining characteristic of how policymakers approached our evolving media ecosystem over the past three decades, it has been their commitment to doing nothing that would impede, even slightly, the economic growth and development of these digital media companies/tech companies (Kosseff 2019).
The second problem with policymakers’ embrace of the technology-company-not-media-company mindset is that we now have a situation in which the primary domains where people and institutions produce, consume, and share media operate largely outside of the operational parameters of media policymaking. Consequently, the values and principles that have long guided media policymaking are therefore consigned to the margins of domains to which they have undeniable relevance (see Napoli 2019).
Instead, our policy approach has embraced the traditional guiding ethos of technology policymaking, which is primarily to spur and support technological innovation (Sørensen 2013). Technology policy does not typically concern itself with, for example, ensuring that citizens have access to a diversity of viewpoints, or that we have an informed electorate, or that local communities’ critical information needs are being met. Now, as we look upon a digital media ecosystem without any meaningful guardrails or public interest obligations placed on the firms at the helm, we can begin to understand why it has been problematic to allow this narrow technology policy ethos to guide what should be seen as media policymaking.
Toward a Definition and Parameters of Media Policy
The previous section made the case for a robust definition of media policy that can satisfy the criteria described above and thus effectively guide the work of policymakers, policy researchers, and policy advocates at a time when the media ecosystem has undergone substantial changes. This is not the first effort on this front. Media policy scholar Sandra Braman (2004) has described media policy as focused on “freedom of expression and participatory decision-making regarding the fundamental structures of society” (179). This articulation, while concise, lacks specificity. We can bring greater specificity to this definition by considering the key substantive areas that define media policy and, along the way, by identifying some of the core normative constructs that determine whether media policies and the systems they are intended to affect are serving the public interest (see McQuail 1992). Toward these ends, this section fleshes out the following definition of media policy:
Media policy is fundamentally concerned with government interventions directed at ensuring that the content, structure, and infrastructures of mediated systems of communication meet communities’ diverse information and entertainment needs and minimize harms, in a manner that is consistent with free speech principles.
As this definition indicates, media policy can be defined in terms of three substantive areas of concern. Intended to be inclusive of the policy issues and the guiding principles that characterize the media policy field, these substantive areas are: content, structure, and infrastructure of the media and information ecosystem. Content can be thought of as policymaking focused primarily on directly influencing the nature of the content provided by media outlets. Structure refers to policymaking directed primarily at influencing the structural elements of media markets, such as competitive conditions, ownership patterns, and related characteristics of content providers. Infrastructure refers to the distribution technologies and networks by which content is disseminated.
Each of these focal points is described in greater detail below, in a way that attempts to provide both historical context and contemporary examples. It is important to emphasize at the outset that these substantive areas are not wholly distinct. Issues of infrastructure policy bear on issues of content (Yoo 2005), as do issues of structure (van der Wurff 2005). For instance, policies directed at the operation of communication networks can indirectly impact the nature of the content produced (Yoo 2005). In addition, structural policies frequently have been implemented with the intention of indirectly impacting content and thereby circumventing possible First Amendment/free speech impediments to more direct efforts aimed at affecting content. For example, policies directed at diversifying ownership of media outlets are often motivated, at least in part, by the assumption that greater diversity of ownership leads to greater diversity of content (see Napoli 1999).
It is also important to emphasize that this discussion is U.S.-centric. While the definition of media policy laid out above has the potential for broader applicability, it is also the case that media policy must be tailored to the distinctive political, cultural, and legal characteristics that distinguish countries from one another. And so, given that the impetus for this special issue is the anniversary of the FCC’s inquiry into how communities’ critical information needs are being met in the digital age, this effort to lay out the key definitional components of media policy reflects this U.S. focus.
Content
Content-related policy concerns generally revolve around either protecting the citizenry from potential harms associated with particular types of media content or encouraging or even requiring the production of certain forms of content deemed to be socially valuable. Protective policies often have focused on content deemed potentially harmful (particularly to children) or at least potentially offensive to the sensibilities of the typical media consumer. Thus, for instance, there is a long tradition of content regulation in broadcasting that focuses primarily on constraining indecent language and sexuality (Napoli and Jackson 2023). Media violence also has been a long-standing concern in the media policymaking arena (Hamilton 1998). Policymakers have long been concerned about the effects of violent content—particularly on children—across a wide array of media, ranging from comic books to motion pictures to (perhaps most prominently) television to (more recently) the Internet and social media.
In recent years, concerns about harmful content have been focused on hate speech and disinformation, particularly as it plays out on social media (Napoli and Jackson 2023). Of course, because such forms of speech receive broad First Amendment protection (see Spicer 2018), the question arises of whether government efforts to curtail the reach of such content inappropriately expand the parameters of media policymaking. On this front, it is worth remembering the oft-forgotten fact that regulations have long been in place prohibiting the intentional dissemination of false news (Timmer 2019). The important caveat here is that these regulations apply only to broadcast radio and television for reasons having to do with broadcasters’ status as licensees of the publicly owned spectrum (i.e., broadcasters as “public trustees” [Devins 1993]). Nonetheless, it is worth recognizing that a precedent has been set in terms of government-imposed restrictions on media outlets’ dissemination of disinformation, despite the strong protection that false speech receives under the First Amendment.
This example highlights a defining characteristic of media policy that will be a recurring theme throughout this article: that the nature of the policies and regulations that can potentially be applied are a function of the characteristics of the specific media technologies at issue. The U.S. approach to media policy has been one of developing different policy and regulatory frameworks for different media, with different degrees (and forms) of government intervention permissible under these different policy and regulatory frameworks (for an overview, see Napoli and Graf 2021).
Turning to affirmative content requirements, policymakers frequently have seen fit to require media outlets to provide certain types of content—typically judged to enhance the political, intellectual, or cultural development of the citizenry. In the U.S., such requirements have been in decline over the past three decades, under the assumption that the media system has become sufficiently vast and competitive that the marketplace will effectively serve the full gamut of audience needs and interests (Napoli 2001). That being said, affirmative requirements related to educational children’s programming remain, as do requirements for cable and satellite systems to devote certain amounts of channel capacity to local, noncommercial, and educational content providers.
Perhaps the most aggressive policy on this front has been the Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine (which, once again, applied only to broadcasters) required licensees to devote news broadcast attention to controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a way that provided comparable opportunities for opposing viewpoints on these issues to be presented (Simmons 1978). Although the FCC eliminated the Fairness Doctrine in 1989, it has proven to be anything but an historical relic (Pickard 2018). Indeed, in the wake of the January 6th insurrection and the recognition that the insurrectionists were fueled in large part by false and hyperpartisan news and information circulating on social media, the Fairness Doctrine reemerged as a topic of policy deliberation (Napoli 2021a). This time, however, the conversation focused on its applicability not to broadcasters, but to social media platforms, as a means of preventing another January 6th. In addition, many conservative policymakers have spoken favorably about revitalizing the Fairness Doctrine and applying it to the social media realm, as a means of combating what they perceive as an anticonservative bias in the content curation and moderation practices of social media platforms (Editorial Board 2020; Swift 2019). Considering the practicality and advisability of such an effort is beyond the scope of this article; however, the key point here is that, across time and across media forms, there remains substantial continuity in the concerns that characterize media policy.
One final example of an affirmative content requirement that is particularly apropos to the focus of this volume is the requirement to provide locally oriented news and information. A guiding principle of media policy has been the notion of localism (Napoli 2001). Localism in this context refers to the imperative to ensure that some component of the media system is devoted to meeting the needs and interests of local communities, so that citizens are sufficiently well informed about community and civic affairs to be able to engage effectively in local self-governance.
Localism has often been pursued through structural means (see below) but has also, in some cases, taken the form of affirmative content requirements. So, for instance, broadcasters have, in the past, been required to devote a certain proportion of their airtime to local news and informational programming. Cable and satellite systems are required to devote a proportion of their channel capacity to local programming, often in the form of public, educational, and government (PEG) channels. Even the “retransmission consent/must-carry” rules, which require cable systems to carry local broadcast stations, were motivated in part by assuring that communities continued to have access to the local news and information provided by local broadcasters (see Napoli 2012).
Such examples from traditional media remind us that ensuring that communities have access to local news and information has been a long-standing media policy priority. Today, of course, the economic crisis confronting local journalism and the resulting proliferation of “news deserts” (Abernathy 2022) represent perhaps the most daunting challenge yet for media policymakers. Among the variety of solutions being considered for this problem, perhaps the only one that fits within the framework of affirmative content requirements would be the proposed legislation (inspired by actions already taken in Australia) to require large digital platforms to negotiate compensation to news outlets as a way of ensuring continued economic support for the production of journalism (Journalism Competition and Preservation Act 2022). Such a policy is, in many ways, analogous to the retransmission consent/must-carry rules that have applied to cable and satellite systems. Only now, it is social media platforms, rather than cable systems, that must negotiate carriage of local media outlets. However, one of the key points of debate in regard to this legislation is that evidence from the Australian context suggests that large news conglomerates fare much better in these negotiations than do smaller, independent local news sources—an outcome that raises questions about the effectiveness of this policy approach to contributing to the continued viability of local journalism (Royal and Napoli 2022).
Structure
Structural policy concerns focus primarily on issues related to the ownership patterns and structure of media systems. Policymakers have approached the regulation of the ownership and structure of media outlets as a primary mechanism for preserving and promoting the various normative principles that reside at the core of media policy. Thus, diversifying the ownership of media outlets and restricting foreign ownership have been seen as important means of maintaining a robust, pluralistic marketplace of ideas in which principles of free speech and a media system that best serves the public interest can thrive.
Ownership policy has long been contentious, perhaps because of the extent to which the issue straddles the economic and sociopolitical terrains of media policy. That is, ownership policy directly engages traditional economic policy concerns, such as competition and efficiency. Such policies impact both competitive conditions in media markets and the extent to which media owners can take advantage of the economies of scale associated with the ownership of greater numbers of media outlets. Ownership policy also directly engages sociopolitical policy concerns related to the diversity of sources of information available to the citizenry; the extent to which media outlets are locally owned and oriented; and, perhaps most important, the extent to which the speech opportunities associated with the ownership of media outlets are widely versus narrowly distributed.
This duality in relation to media ownership is reflected in the fact that, when it comes to mergers and acquisitions involving media companies, not only do either the Department of Justice or the Federal Trade Commission engage in a merger review, which is narrowly focused on the effects of a proposed merger on competition, but the FCC also engages in its own independent review to determine whether the merger is in the public interest (Sallet 2014). It is through this public interest layer of review that noneconomic concerns, such as the potential impact of the merger on diversity of viewpoints or localism, are taken into consideration.
U.S. media ownership regulations have applied primarily to the ownership of broadcast outlets (involving both national and local ownership caps) as well as to broadcast-newspaper cross-ownership at the local market level (Scherer 2021). Since the 1980s, the general trend has been one of the gradual relaxation or elimination of most of these ownership regulations, though some do remain (Scherer 2021). It is important to note that the history of media ownership policy in the U.S. has included not only efforts to restrict the size and reach of individual media companies but also to improve the racial and gender diversity of the owners of media outlets, though many of these diversity-enhancing efforts have also been scaled back or eliminated over the years (Scherer 2021).
The focal point of concerns related to media ownership has shifted dramatically in recent years. Policymakers’ traditional concerns about concentration of ownership in the broadcast and newspaper sectors have waned as the audience reach for these media outlets has diminished. The focal point now, of course, is large digital platform companies such as Meta (Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp), Alphabet (Google/YouTube), and ByteDance (TikTok), which command unprecedented accumulations of audience attention and advertising dollars (Yglesias 2019), even in a media environment that has presumably become more fragmented and more competitive.
As with traditional media ownership policy, the concerns underlying digital platform ownership are both economic and sociopolitical. From an economic standpoint, it has been well documented how platforms such as Facebook and Google have come to dominate the digital advertising marketplace—a situation that raises traditional monopoly concerns (Lebow 2021). But the outsized influence that these dominant digital platforms can have on the marketplace of ideas has also been a point of concern, with calls to break up companies like Meta and Alphabet in some cases premised on claims that these companies are using their massive gatekeeping power to exert political influence and suppress certain viewpoints (e.g., Chilson and Mattox 2020).
TikTok provides an interesting case in point as it provides the most recent context in which concerns about foreign ownership of media outlets have emerged (Palmer 2022). TikTok is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. This fact has raised widespread concerns about whether the platform’s massive reach in the U.S. and associated data-gathering capacity could be leveraged by the Chinese government to obtain sensitive information and engage in large-scale political influence operations (Palmer 2022). State governments have begun banning the app on state-owned mobile devices. Legislation to ban the app has been introduced into the Senate (Palmer 2022), and Congress has considered a blanket ban (Bordelon 2023). At the same time, in an effort to create a more meaningful firewall between the platform and the Chinese government, the Biden administration has engaged in negotiations about changing TikTok’s ownership structure (Hirsch et al. 2022).
Finally, another important structural dimension of media policy involves the underlying economic model of media outlets. This brings us into the realm of government funding for media. It is well known that, compared to other developed nations, the economic commitment in the U.S. to public service media has been minimal (Usher 2011). The U.S. media system has operated under a largely commercial structure, with the noncommercial media enterprises that do exist relying primarily on forms of support such as philanthropy and audience donations.
The economic crisis that has befallen local journalism has finally triggered a reexamination of whether there should be a shift in governmental commitment to supporting local journalism. By most accounts, the commercial model of local journalism has been irrevocably damaged to a degree that only a fraction of the journalistic infrastructure that has historically served local communities can remain viable (Sullivan 2020). As a result, a reorientation of the economic model of local journalism would seem to be in order—one in which public support plays a significantly more prominent role. On this front, we have seen the introduction of legislation such as the Local Journalism Sustainability Act (2021), which provides tax credits to encourage subscriptions to local news sources, local news outlets to hire journalists, and small businesses to advertise with local news outlets. We have also seen individual states dedicating public funds to supporting local news enterprises (Carpenter 2022). As local journalism continues to decline, reorienting the funding model for local news sources may be the most pressing and consequential media policy issue of the moment.
Infrastructure
Infrastructure, in this case, refers to the transmission mechanisms for media content. Of the three primary areas of policy concern that are contained within this definition of media policy, infrastructure is the one that reflects, to some degree, a definitional expansion beyond conventional interpretive approaches to media policy. Infrastructure issues typically get associated with other policy domains (e.g., telecommunications or technology). However, the intertwining of content, structure, and infrastructure in the operation of the contemporary media and information ecosystem undermines the logic of excluding infrastructure concerns from an overarching media policy framework. Moreover, as will become clear below, many infrastructure concerns reflect core media policy concerns related to access to diverse viewpoints, support for local news and information sources, and the cultivation of an informed citizenry.
In some instances, these infrastructures have historically been under governmental control, in which case the allocation of access becomes a fundamental policy issue. Thus, for instance, spectrum policy has been—and continues to be—a core concern in the media policy arena. Early spectrum policy concerns involved establishing the key components of a regulatory apparatus as well as the mechanisms for license allocation (e.g., McChesney 1993). Central to these processes at the outset was ensuring that access to the infrastructure was oriented to serving the needs and interests of local communities and, later, that access decisions sought to diversify those who were granted access (Napoli 2001).
In recent years, the nature of spectrum policy concerns has changed dramatically, reflecting the increased flexibility of spectrum uses brought about by the process of digitization, as well as a stronger governmental commitment to privatization of the spectrum. This privatization process has itself become a major source of policy debate, as have issues related to licensed versus unlicensed spectrum uses and to spectrum usage priorities that are most efficient and best serve the public interest.
In other instances, policymakers have seen fit to institute policies to spur the diffusion of certain infrastructures. Over the past three decades, there has been substantial attention devoted to the issue of broadband infrastructure and possible mechanisms for accelerating its build-out and, perhaps most important, its reach—and accessibility—to sectors of the citizenry facing significant barriers to access (Kruger and Gilroy 2019). Such concerns reflect a long-standing policy tradition of concern for widespread access to key elements of the information infrastructure, whether in terms of universal service policies for telephone service or Internet access or the allocation of broadcast licenses to even the smallest of communities (see Napoli 2001). In recent years, the federal government has been playing an increasingly active role in providing funding to states to facilitate the deployment and adoption of high-speed Internet services (see, e.g., National Telecommunications and Information Administration 2022a, 2022b). Key motivators for these efforts include assuring that individuals have the necessary access to news and information to be able to effectively participate in economic and political life.
The continued viability of local news and information, which was at the core of the FCC’s Future of Media proceeding (Waldman and Working Group on the Information Needs of Communities 2011) and which has been shown to be central to both the content and structure dimensions of media policy (see above), has recently been characterized as an infrastructure issue as well. A signature initiative of the Biden administration soon after taking office was the passage of an infrastructure bill (White House, n.d.) that was intended to make much-needed improvements to various aspects of the U.S. infrastructure, create jobs, and help the country rebound from the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the bill worked its way through Congress, it sparked significant debate about what constitutes infrastructure (Tankersley and Smialek 2021). In an effort to have much-needed funding for local journalism included in the infrastructure bill, a number of policymakers and policy advocates encouraged Congress to consider local news outlets as a vital component of America’s “civic infrastructure” (Rebuild Local News Coalition 2021). In making the case for considering local journalism as civic infrastructure, media policy scholar Victor Pickard (2021) borrowed language from the FCC’s Future of Media proceeding (Waldman and Working Group on the Information Needs of Communities 2011) and the Knight Commission report (Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy 2009) that inspired the FCC proceeding: “Local news serves our critical information needs, particularly regarding vital issues such as vaccines, elections and public safety.”
Support for local journalism was ultimately not included in the infrastructure bill, but the broadening of the meaning of infrastructure that was part of the deliberations surrounding the bill highlights how the concerns about whether communities’ information needs are effectively being met stand at the intersection of all three focal points of concern that characterize media policy.
Conclusion
This article has sought to lay out the parameters of media policy and to illustrate how technological changes have made these parameters somewhat contested territory. The parameters of media policy laid out here are, admittedly, somewhat broader than is conventionally accepted. However, this more expansive notion is in many ways a response to the problematically narrow conceptualization of media policy that has characterized the past three decades, in which each new technology, or evolutionary step in existing technologies, was primarily interpreted as another step toward the irrelevance of particular media policy principles or concerns. As we witness these new components of our media and information ecosystem contribute to many of the exact problems (propaganda, disinformation, hate speech, monopolization) that motivated the creation of a media policy framework in the first place (e.g., McChesney 1993), we can hopefully also recognize that a more expansive and inclusive approach to defining the parameters of media policy is essential to ensuring that Americans’ critical information needs are being met.
Footnotes
Philip M. Napoli is James R. Shepley Professor of Public Policy in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, where he is also the director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy. He has provided research and testimony to the Federal Communications Commission and other government agencies.