Abstract
Public policy perspectives and convergence related laws seem to assume that convergent technology is predisposed towards convergent organizations, convergent content, convergent consumer behavior and convergent markets; such a cloud of ‘convergent’ thinking in constructing policy perspectives does seem to naturally create a necessity for countervailing or compensatory regulatory intervention from a Free Speech perspective that privileges public access, plurality and diversity.
However, convergence has lead to the emergence of diversified pockets of content. The inherently disaggregated, divergent structure of the Internet has spawned a ‘democratic culture’. Although concerns about control and power continue to exist in a digital world, it is unlikely that even media conglomerates will find it easy to dominate the media in a convergent world tempered by divergence.
The perspective of cross-media ownership, concentration of ownership and competition laws are historically ordained paradigms that need to be revisited to shape public policy responses with respect to convergence. We prefer a nuanced regulatory approach based on a ‘layered network regulatory model’ that differentially treats the ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ network layers based on the realities of media concentration and the ‘convergence’ experience; and propose an alternative policy of ‘affirmative public ownership’ to articulate ‘voice’ and ‘agency’ on behalf of public values.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See Sect. 6.1 on suggestions for structural regulation across vertical layers.
- 3.
In this connection see NewsCorp (2012)
- 4.
Please discussion of ‘Free Speech’ perspective in Sect. 3.
- 5.
According to Ofcom, an externality is said to occur when a transaction between two parties has an impact on a third party, which is not involved and typically does not take it into account.
- 6.
See the Public Service Broadcasting Review (Phase I) by Ofcom for a detailed discussion of its approach to market failures in public service broadcasting (Ofcom, 2004).
- 7.
‘The greater the diversity of ownership in a particular area, the less chance there is that a single person or group can have an ‘inordinate effect, in a political, editorial, or similar programming sense, on public opinion at the regional level’ (FCC, 1964).
- 8.
In this connection see Bagdikian (2004) for a detailed description of how a cartel of five giant media corporations that owned most of the newspapers, magazines, books, radio and TV stations, and movie studios of the United States controlled their content.
- 9.
See detailed discussion of ‘Convergence Legislative Frameworks’ in Sect. 5.2.
- 10.
Cited in Yoo (2009).
- 11.
Common law is based on case law and precedent rather than codified law. It is followed in England and most of the Commonwealth of nations (The Robbin Collection, 2010).
- 12.
See discussion on the difference between competition in the product market and information market in Sect. 2.2.1 on ‘competition’.
- 13.
See Kumar (2012) for a discussion of cultural policy issues that need to be considered in addition to market issues while responding to convergence.
- 14.
In this connection also see Sect. 2.2.1 for discussion by Ofcom on ‘private value’ and ‘external value’.
- 15.
See (Horwitz, 2004) for a detailed discussion of these two approaches.
- 16.
Justice O’Connor’s noting in her Metro Broadcasting (1990, p. 626) dissent.
- 17.
We will draw upon the layered organization of networks, and the network layers regulatory model to present our suggestions about ownership regulations from a Free Speech point of view in Sect. 6.
- 18.
See Sect. 6.2.1 for our discussion of Blevin’s notion of ‘infrastructural scarcity’ in the context of our suggested regulatory approach.
- 19.
The network layers framework has been earlier discussed in Sect. 4.3.
- 20.
The issue of ‘access’ is discussed in detail in Sect. 6 on ‘A Suggested Framework’.
- 21.
In this connection see de Steel (n.d.)
- 22.
In this connection see Swanson (2013)
- 23.
The proposal was to revoke a 30-year-old cross-ownership rule that does not allow a company to own one newspaper, two television stations and upto eight radio stations in the same media market.
- 24.
See discussion of ‘networks’ in Sect. 4.1.
- 25.
Here, ‘network layer’ refers to physical transmission infrastructure—the “roads” upon which traffic is transmitted. The ‘application layer’ refers to platforms like search engines and social networking sites that are themselves (like postal packages) transmitted upon these physical roads.
- 26.
In this connection, also see Baxter’s law—‘where the platform (the core monopoly) is subject to regulation but the applications market is not (Farrell, 2003).’
- 27.
This layer is identified as such in Van Dijk’s formulation of network layers which we have discussed in Sect. 4.1. The network layers have been detailed here as those of ‘network infrastructure’ and ‘network services’; in contrast, Blevin uses a broader categorization of ‘network-layers’ and ‘application-layers’ to construct his argument.
- 28.
This is important in the context of increasing concentration of the Internet. See discussion on this in Sect. 5.4 on post-convergence policy challenges.
- 29.
We distinguish between ‘public’ and ‘government’ ownership, although the latter is not necessarily ruled out.
- 30.
Malcolm Matson has celebrated the emergence of ‘hundreds if not thousands of examples of what are becoming known as open public access networks (Matson, 2009).’ Yochai Benchler has discussed the possibilities—and advantages—of ‘open wireless’ systems compared to systems of ‘licensed spectrum’ (Benkler, 2012).
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Dey, S. (2016). Convergence Policy and Regulation: A Free Speech Perspective. In: Lugmayr, A., Dal Zotto, C. (eds) Media Convergence Handbook - Vol. 1. Media Business and Innovation. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54484-2_4
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