Strategies for Broadband Democracy at the Local Level


Submitted by admin on Mon, 04/02/2007 - 21:10.

Strategies for Broadband Democracy at the Local Level

The broadband revolution--still in its infancy but offering the potential for a new, more democratic media system--has arrived. Roughly a third of all US homes connected to the Internet now enjoy high-speed access, and that number is growing daily. So, too, are the speeds at which users connect to the Internet increasing, although we have yet to see the kinds of robust residential networks (operating at 10 megabits per second and above) that will readily permit multimedia material to flow in both directions. But in order for that potential to be realized, community leaders, media activists, and representatives of the nonprofit sector must become more actively engaged in the broadband build-out process. Without question, the new high-speed networks are headed our way, but whether they simply deliver more of the same conglomerate culture, or whether they open new opportunities for civic discourse and cultural expression, will depend on the actions that communities take today.

In an effort to foster a collective envisioning of this new, more participatory communications environment, one that accommodates a full range of civic, educational, and cultural expression, the Center for Digital Democracy has launched its Digital Destiny Campaign. Combining activism at the local level with a range of informative online resources, the campaign provides the tools that communities need to harness the power of broadband--via cable, DSL, or wireless networks, and including digital television--with content, applications, and services that reflect the diversity of our culture rather than the marketing formulas of a handful of conglomerates.

Given the tight control over broadband networks wielded by cable and phone company monopolies, unfortunately, there is no guarantee that any of the new online resources will extend beyond the usual market-driven fare. However dazzling on-demand entertainment, sports, and gaming might be, we need to ensure the availability of public-interest online programming as well, including content produced by individuals and community groups themselves. Just as we have set aside space in the natural environment for public parks and beaches, and just as we have designated portions of the broadcast spectrum for noncommercial and educational use, so must we ensure that the new broadband infrastructure similarly accommodates applications and content designed to meet civic, social, and cultural needs. Communities must be informed of the public-interest options they should have in the new broadband marketplace, and encouraged to take part in the decision-making process surrounding the deployment of broadband and digital television platforms.

The Digital Destiny project addresses this need in six distinct ways:

  • Broadband Assessment: Surveying the existing and emerging new-media infrastructure (cable, DSL, wireless, and digital TV) to determine the prospects for public-interest, noncommercial, and minority programming.

  • Citizen Access: Exploring existing opportunities for access to facilities and training, highlighting those projects and organizations that promote media democracy, and working to expand access to the new digital tools of media production and distribution.

  • Policy Engagement: Fostering citizen and community involvement in the regulatory and policy making process that will define the ground rules of broadband deployment.

  • Collaboration: Taking stock of existing public-service programming projects, and exploring opportunities to pool these resources in a new "information commons."

  • Support Structures: Promoting public, private, and in-kind support of noncommercial broadband content and delivery.

  • Diversity of Viewpoint: Analyzing the local media landscape--who owns what?--and assessing opportunities for minority, independent, and alternative voices to be heard.

With the widespread deployment of high-speed networks, the broadband revolution is underway. In the process, there will be any number of efforts to exploit the commercial potential of the high-speed Internet. Our task is to ensure that broadband serves as effectively as it sells, fostering two-way, interactive applications. By working together at the local level, assessing the broadband infrastructure for its potential to serve the public interest, and building new alliances to ensure such service, we have the opportunity to shape our digital destiny.

Broadband Assessment

 

Surveying the existing and emerging new-media infrastructure (cable, DSL, wireless, and digital TV) to determine the prospects for public-interest, noncommercial, and minority programming.

The technical specifications can be daunting initially, but the basic contours of the broadband landscape (featuring fast, always-on connections that facilitate the delivery of a wide range of multimedia content) can be grasped fairly quickly. Invariably, the various digital platforms are capable of delivering much more than they currently offer--five channels or more of simultaneous programing by a single DTV station, for example, or high-speed institutional networks (I-nets) linking municipal agencies and community organizations. Once we grasp the vast dimensions of the broadband revolution, and the potential of new technologies therein to serve community as well as purely commercial interests, we will be able to define a new generation of public-service programing--everything from expanded PEG (public, government, and government) access channels to public-access streaming-media servers for all manner of noncommercial expression. CDD has prepared some basic material on the broadband revolution, including

  • Broadband Primer
  • 5 Questions on Broadband's Future
  • Neither Worldly nor Wide: How Broadband Systems will Narrow the Net
  • Broadband Bill of Rights
But there are also a number of other sources of useful technical information:
  • The Content Village is a "new service funded under the European Community 'eContent' programme--a market oriented programme which aims to support the production, use and distribution of European digital content and to promote linguistic and cultural diversity on the global networks." It's an enormous site, full of information about and links to broadband projects worldwide.
  • CED, Communications Engineering & Design, which bills itself as "the premier magazine of broadband technology," offers extensive resources on all aspects of broadband.
  • Intel's Broadband Basics, once you get past all the Pentium 4 plugs, offers a fair amount of solid information on broadband, although Intel's vision for music, video, and gaming, not surprisingly, is decidedly commercial.
  • The Intelligent Community Forum, a "special interest group within the World Teleport Association that focuses on the uses of broadband technology for economic development by communities," includes a useful discussion of "intelligent communities," those that recognize "communications bandwidth as the new essential utility."
  • DesignNine, a technology consulting firm, specializes in broadband planning and development and offers downloadable one-page handouts suitable for community meetings and discussions of community technology.
  • Cable-Modem.net's Streaming Media page offers background information on streaming media, links to software vendors and programmers, and a streaming media FAQ.
  • CATVCyberLab is a nuts-and-bolts compendium of information on broadband via cable modems, including links to leading commercial broadband sites.
  • TechNet's Broadband Primer offers a brief overview of the topic, including information on broadband applications in other countries.
  • CNET's Insider's Guide to DSL seems to imply that there are more residential DSL options than there really are, but the introductory material is both clear and concise.
  • Broadband Reports may be overkill for more casual observers of the field, but its forum for user reports from the field, reviewing and rating various broadband providers around the country, doesn't pull any punches.
  • NetworkWorld's Net.Worker Research: DSL is an extensive collection of online resources on the phone companies' broadband offerings.
  • Wireless Broadband, a Cable Datacom News report, provides a useful overview of a technology that, for all of its promise, remains far behind cable and DSL in the broadband sweepstakes.
  • WirelessNYC is one of a number of community organizations around the country working to create public-access Internet "hot spots" for Wi-Fi networks, and its web site includes a number of informational resources on this growing movement.
  • PBS Digital Television, in addition to listing the current DTV programs that the vast majority of Americans cannot yet receive (at least not in their high-definition splendor), also provides a good overview of this still-emerging technology. PBS also offers more detailed technical information about DTV.
  • APTS, the Association of Public Television Stations, maintains a PTV and Broadband page that is full of information on the transition to the high-speed Internet. Also notable on the APTS site is its Digital Services and Planning page, which includes information on the pubcasters' efforts to make the transition to the new digital platform.
  • The Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA), a "nonprofit corporation formed to create specification(s) that define an interoperable implementation for streaming rich media (video, audio and associated data) over Internet Protocol (IP) networks," (and whose members include AOL Time Warner, IBM, and Sony as well as academic institutions), offers online resources of interest to content producers and distributors alike.
  • DTV Zone, a joint production of the National Association of Broadcasters and the Consumer Electronics Association, is full of basic information in addition to a lot of DTV hype.

Citizen Access

 

Exploring existing opportunities for access to facilities and training, highlighting those projects and organizations that promote media democracy, and working to expand access to the new digital tools of media production and distribution.

Especially as the broadband revolution creates a new version of the digital divide--separating those with premium service who travel in the fast lanes of telecommunications from those who remain stuck in the Internet's dial-up on-ramps--it will be important to nurture and celebrate those organizations and projects striving to share more broadly some of the wealth of the new-media technologies. Among the model public access projects around the country, ranging from PEG operations to online communities to service organizations, are the following:

  • Grand Rapids Community Media Center has long been a leader in the field, a media access and training center that also hosts a number of nonprofit affiliates: GRTV, the public-access cable channel; WYCE, the listener-supported community radio station; the Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy, a media literacy research center and media watchdog organization; GrandNet, a nonprofit technical assistance program serving other nonprofits in the region; and the Grand Community, an online gathering place.
  • Chicago Access Network Television, representing the "P" in PEG-access cable channels, offers training and access to no less than five community-oriented channels, "a public space where Chicagoans can discuss issues of local concern, promote health, educational and economic resources in the community, and celebrate local talent and initiatives."
  • SFGTV, the government-access channel in San Francisco that has been broadcasting since 1993, offers 24-hour programming that includes gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Board of Supervisors' meetings and coverage of other governmental meetings and events, as well as municipal information and public service announcements. In addition to its television programming, SFGTV also maintains an online archive of selected meetings that have occurred during the past 90 days, available as streaming video to PC users anywhere.
  • Butte College TV, based in tiny Oroville, Calif., is nevertheless a full-service educational broadcaster, offering distance learning courses online, through local cable systems, and at remote centers in Chico and Orland, Calif.; media services to three Butte College campuses; tele-courses for college credit through the PBS Adult Learning Service; and online streaming video presentations of selected BCTV programming.
  • Blacksburg Electronic Village is one of the oldest and strongest of the online communities (in this instance linked to a highly wired college town in Virginia), in which most of the content is generated by local individuals and organizations.
  • Community Technology Centers Network (CTCNet), is a network of over a thousand independent technology access centers that provide a variety of services in their commitment to "a society in which all people are equitably empowered by technology skills and usage."
  • The Association for Community Networking serves the online community movement with a variety of resources, including a recently added broadband and wireless section of its web site.
  • Contentbank, a project of The Children's Partnership (TCP), is "designed to spur the development of needed Internet content for low-income communities," with best practices, online tools, and other resources, including the TCP's recent report on the actual programming that is needed on the other side of the digital divide, "The Search for High-Quality Online Content for Low-Income and Underserved Communities: Evaluating and Producing What's Needed." (PDF)
  • CTCNet's Center Start-Up Manual offers extensive information and tools for those seeking to establish a community technology center. A companion document, the Operations Toolkit, was developed to give these centers "a wide array of templates, best practices, and forms currently used in the field."

Additionally, CDD's resource page on the Broadband Regulatory Environment offers links to sources of information on the rules that govern the deployment of high-speed networks.

Policy Engagement

 

Fostering citizen and community involvement in the regulatory and policy making process that will define the groundrules of broadband deployment.

The following organizations and sites provide useful information, examples, and ideas concerning the management of telecomunications resources in the public interest:

A number of states and localities, moreover, have adopted various telecommunications bill-of-rights ordinances in an effort to ensure equitable citizen access to the evolving broadband environment. Examples of such regulations include Montgomery County, Maryland's proposed cable consumer protections (downloadable Word document), New Jersey's redefinition of acceptable cable standards (press release), Seattle's Cable Customer Bill of Rights, and California's Telecommunications Bill of Rights (downloadable Word document).

Collaboration

 

Collaboration: Taking stock of existing public-service programming projects, and exploring opportunities to pool these resources in a new "information commons."

While there is no shortage of valuable noncommercial programming online, these sites tend to be overshadowed by far larger (and far more heavily cross-promoted) commercial ventures. Even within the commercial marketplace itself, a handful of new-media titans hold sway (with the top 3 web properties in the US, for example, attracting more traffic than the next 17 combined), and that's not likely to change as the cable and telco giants tighten their grip on broadband delivery. But as CDD's Dot-Commons Tour suggests, many of the components of an online civic sector are already in place. We need now to weave together these various strands of e-democracy and e-culture, fashioning a public-interest corollary, in effect, to the private-interest cartels that dominate the media today. Here is a small sampling of organizations engaged in collaborative online projects:

  • PortalWisconsin.org is a collaborative site involving a number of the state's cultural organizations, featuring the work of such institutions as the Wisconsin Historical Society, Wisconsin Public Radio, and the Oneida Nation Museum.
  • Independent Media Center is a "network of collectively run media outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of the truth." Best known for its efforts to provide grassroots coverage of the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in late 2000, a decentralized network of Indy Media centers now includes some 30 affiliates worldwide and another 28 across the US. Searchable in nine languages across multiple media (photos, videos, audio, and print), the IMC site also offers extensive opportunities for users to publish their own multimedia material, as well as opportunities to discuss current events and issues.
  • Creative Commons, by its very nature a collaborative undertaking, "is devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others to build upon and share." Among the Creative Commons' projects is a set of copyright licenses free for public use. Inspired in part by the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), these licenses allow people to dedicate their creative works (websites, scholarship, music, film, photography, literature, courseware, and the like) to the public domain, or to retain their copyright while licensing them as free for certain uses, on certain conditions.
  • Ibiblio, which bills itself as "the public's library and digital archive," is a collaborative project of the University of North Carolina and the Center for the Public Domain. It serves as a "conservancy of freely available information, including software, music, literature, art, history, science, politics, and cultural studies. "
  • The Community Connector is a project of the University of Michigan School of Information. It provides links to resources of interest to community-based organizations, funders, and scholars interested in community networks, including comprehensive directories of such networks, online forums and listservs, conferences, and related sites and organizations. Equally impressive are the "Best Practices" section for organizational use and the "Reading Room" archive of articles for students and academics.
  • Minnesota E-Democracy is the best known and oldest of the state election sites, dating way back to 1994, the Paleolithic Era of the Web. Entirely volunteer based and running on donated servers, the Minnesota site has attracted more than 3,000 mailing-list subscribers, who participate in discussion forums covering both state-wide and local political issues. Discussion topics (which currently include education policy, taxation, transportation and transit, and redistricting, elections, and ethics) are substantive and taken seriously by the forum participants, whose online behavior is monitored by volunteer forum leaders. The site also contains an extensive listing of links to local candidates and to other political, news, and information sites, both in Minnesota and nationally.
  • FreeNetworks.org, "a voluntary cooperative association dedicated to education, collaboration, and advocacy of the creation of free digital network infrastructures," provides extensive coverage of the public Wi-Fi movement in particular.
  • Connecting Canadians is is the Canadian government's "vision and plan to make Canada the most connected country in the world." Featured on the site is a useful overview of the six-part initiative, which includes a Smart Communities project and Community Broadband Workforce.
  • Better Broadband for Britain is a compendium of information on the latest community networking developments in England, with a useful Introduction to community broadband.

Support Structures

 

Promoting public, private, and in-kind support of noncommercial broadband content and delivery.

Although there has been a lot of talk of e-philanthropy and online fundraising, the philanthropic community in general has been as tardy as most other parts of the nonprofit sector in coming to grips with all of the political, social, economic, and cultural implications of the Internet. Meanwhile, even though the public sector traditionally contributes only a fraction of philanthropy's total largesse (and even though government funding is always subject to periodic cutbacks and partisan squabbles), as the list below suggests governments at all levels have played an important role in supporting public-interest networking activities:

  • Technology Opportunities Program, a program of the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, TOP awards matching grants to public and nonprofit organizations to demonstrate practical applications of telecommunications and information technologies. To date, TOP has awarded 555 grants, in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, totaling $204.9 million and leveraging $282 million in local matching funds.
  • The E-Rate Program is the discount that schools and libraries receive for the acquisition of telecommunication services. Eligible schools and libraries can receive discounts of 20-90 percent on such services, including Internet access and the internal connections necessary for deploying technology into the classroom. The E-Rate was established by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (which for the first time made schools and libraries eligible for Universal Service support) and is administered by the Schools and Libraries Division of the Universal Service Administrative Company, the not-for-profit corporation appointed by the FCC to ensure that the benefits of telecommunications services reach students and communities across the country.
  • Digital Promise is the ambitious plan that former FCC Chairman Newton Minow and former PBS President Lawrence Grossman unveiled in 2001. Their proposal calls for the creation of a Digital Opportunity Investment Trust, drawing on the proceeds of spectrum auctions "to galvanize local public interest resources that are essential to the strength and quality of our society, to halt the encroachment of purely marketplace values upon the missions of our public service institutions, and to use the powerful new digital tools to enable those not-for-profit institutions to move outside their walls to widen their audiences and bring their educational and informational resources, essential services, and cultural programs to all citizens." Legislation has been introduced to divert a portion of spectrum proceeds to a trust fund for this digital cultural programming, but the prospects for passage anytime soon are rather slim. In the meantime, a report published by the project, Digital Gift to the Nation: Fulfilling the Promise of the Digital and Internet Age, available both online and through bookstores, covers the ground well, with chapters on such topics as education, public broadcasting, civic engagement, and the arts and culture in the digital age.
  • The Michigan Broadband Development Authority is dedicated to expanding broadband access for Michigan's citizens and businesses by offering organizations in the public and private sector low-cost financing for the acquisition of hardware, software and services that will improve or increase their use of broadband technologies.
  • The Texas Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund Board is committed to leading the state "in the development of an advanced and sustainable telecommunications infrastructure that stimulates equitable access and universal connectivity through grant awards to public schools, institutions of higher education, libraries, and authorized healthcare facilities," including a program of Community Network Grants.
  • The Community Technology Foundation of California is a source not only of funding for digital divide connectivity projects (including fellowships for community leaders) in that state (totaling some $1.89 million last year), but also features pertinent information resources and a users forum (although the latter has not generated much traffic thus far).
  • The California TeleConnect Fund is a state-run version of the federal e-rate program. In addition to schools and libraries, the fund also supports community-based organizations that offer health care, job training, job placement, or educational instruction.

Diversity of Viewpoint

 

Analyzing the local media landscape--who owns what?--and assessing opportunities for minority, independent, and alternative voices to be heard.

In addition to CDD's Media Ownership pages, the following online resources offer a wealth of information on the media ownership issue, helping to establish a context for citizen assessment of the local media outlets that purport to serve their needs:


 

 

 

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