The Future of American Communications Working Group (FACT) will produce a volume outlining a new vision for communications policy in America and the practical steps needed to achieve it. The goal of the project is to produce a volume of work prescribing a comprehensive telecommunications policy agenda for the new federal administration to be entering office in January 2009, an agenda that emphasizes the potential of information technologies for improving democratic discourse, social responsibility, and the quality of life, and the means by which information technologies can be made available to all Americans.
The volume of work produced by the FACT Working Group will include a comprehensive vision for the United States as a 21st century information society that is both internally inclusive and globally competitive; an analysis of the reasons for the failure of the previously most ambitious attempt at rewriting American telecommunications policy: the Telecommunications Act of 1996; and an international benchmark and best practices survey. It will address issues such as: public service media; network neutrality; universal broadband policy; rural connectivity; universal service funding mechanisms; media ownership; minority ownership; municipal networks; spectrum policy; access, unbundling and structural separation; wireless and mobile services; and media ethics: product placement, "fake news" and the fairness doctrine. A concluding chapter will summarize and contextualize the recommendations in the various fields and present them in the form of a plan for action.
The work will be carried following the success of previous projects developed by working groups at the Institute for Information Policy at Penn State (IIP), and in particular the interest raised among academics and policymakers alike, by its most recent project on universal broadband service.
Group Director:
Amit M. Schejter, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Communications, Penn State University
Research Fellows:
* Marvin Ammori, J.D., Assistant Professor of Law, University of Nebraska - Lincoln, College of Law
* Leonard M. Baynes, J.D., M.B.A., Professor of Law and the inaugural Director of The Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic Development at St. John's University School of Law
* Robert M. Frieden, J.D., Professor and Pioneers Chair in Cable Telecommunications, Penn State University
* Ellen R. Goodman, J.D., Associate professor of Law, Rutgers School of Law - Camden
* Krishna Jayakar, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Communications, Penn State University
* Robert W. McChesney, Ph.D., Gutgsell Endowed Professor, Department of Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
* Philip Napoli, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Communications & Media Management and Director of the Donald McGannon Communication Research Center, Fordham University
* Jon M. Peha, Full Professor in the Department of Engineering & Public Policy and the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Associate Director of the Center for Wireless and Broadband Networking, Carnegie Mellon University
* Jorge Reina Schement, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Communications and co-Director of the Institute for Information Policy, Penn State University
* Sharon Strover, Ph.D., Chair and Professor, Department Radio-television-Film and Director of the Telecommunications and Information Policy Institute, University of Texas
* Andrea H. Tapia, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Information Sciences and Technology? and Affiliate Assistant Professor, Department of Labor Studies and Industrial Relations, Penn State University
* Richard D. Taylor, J.D., Ph.D., Palmer Chair and Professor of Telecommunication Studies and co-director of the Institute for Information Policy, Penn State University
* Ernest J. Wilson III, Ph.D., Walter Annenberg Chair in Communication and dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California
* Timothy Wu, J.D., Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
Check back later for:
* The FACT wiki
* Working papers on:
o public service media
o network neutrality
o rural connectivity
o media ownership
o minority ownership
o municipal networks
o media ethics vis a vis fake news and product placement
o and more!