All of the short essays in this volume look past the rhetoric of technological determinism and reliance on the natural logic of the market to consider the power of law and policy to steer new media in one direction or another. Many of the essays look backwards through history or outwards across national borders. They all look forward to how today’s policies will shape the future of the internet and society.
A particular focus of interest for some of the contributors is the revelations that followed Edward Snowden’s mass disclosure of classified documents in 2013, which revealed the U.S. National Security Agency’s systematic and longstanding program of monitoring global communications. Some chapters consider different countries’ varying approaches to regulating the proliferation of online communication, while others assess the current state of digital technology. They all call for policy interventions to solve market failures. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Studies in Media Communication.
Introduction: Internet Policy Crises
Peter Decherney & Victor Pickard
Part I: The Pre-History of Internet Policy
1. The Air Belongs to the People
Victor Pickard
2. Infrastructure in the Air
Josh Shepperd
Part II: The Future of Internet Policy
3. Be Realistic, Demand the Impossible: Three Radically Democratic Internet Policies
Robert W. McChesney
4. Hyper-power and Private Monopoly: The Unholy Marriage of (Neo)corporatism and the Imperial Surveillance State
Chris Marsden
5. The Return of Ideology and the Future of Chinese Internet Policy
Guobin Yang
6. The US Digital Divide: A Call for a New Philosophy
Sharon Strover
7. Crypto War II
Sascha D. Meinrath & Sean Vitka
8. Persistent Pursuit of Personal Information: A Historical Perspective on Digital Advertising Strategies
Inger L. Stole
9. The Media Policy Tower of Babble: A Case for ‘‘Policy Literacy Pedagogy’’
Becky Lentz
10. Utopian Games
Greg Lastowka
11. Fair Use Goes Global
Peter Decherney
12. The Great Evasion: Confronting Market Failure in American Media Policy
Victor Pickard
13. The Death and Life of a Great American Agency
Kevin Werbach
14. "What is wrong cannot be made right" – Why has media reform been sidelined in the debate over "social justice" in Israel?
Amit Schejter and Noam Tirosh
Biography
Peter Decherney is Professor of English and Cinema Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA, and the author of Hollywood’s Copyright Wars (2012).
Victor Pickard is Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA, and the author of America’s Battle for Media Democracy (2014).