Digital Future of Public Media

Wael Ghonim, Google executive by day, secret Facebook activist by night, famously declared right after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down in February: "If you want to liberate a society just give them the Internet."

Overthrowing a government is one thing. But building a sustainable democracy is turning out to be more difficult, and the Internet's role in that process is much less clear.

Hannah Sassaman, a Field Analyst with the Open Technology Initiative a board member at Allied Media Projects and a longtime organizer at Prometheus, wrote and adapted these thoughts in anticipation of the workshop she and others will be leading at the Allied Media Conference, Building a Movement with Media Policy Campaigns.

The Broadband Technology Opportunities Program’s Public Computer Center (PCC) grants provide funding for organizations across the United States to construct and expand places for the public to access broadband Internet. The City of Philadelphia, as the anchor partner in the Philadelphia Freedom Rings partnership, received over $6 million to build and expand a total of 77 PCCs throughout the city.

Updated Call for Paper Proposals

New ICTs + New Media = New Democracy? Communications policy and public life in the age of broadband

A by-invitation experts’ workshop

New America Foundation, September 20-22, 2011

Why is it so incredibly difficult to figure out how much of the nation has access to affordable broadband? For the past 15 years, the Federal Communications Commission has been required by law to collect data on high-speed Internet access. For the most part that information has been fairly useless for the public or even for policy types. Up until recently, for example, a telecom company only needed to serve one customer in a ZIP code to get credit for serving everyone.

Here at the New America Foundation we are excited to head to Boston this weekend (April 8-10) for The National Conference for Media Reform ( NCMR) 2011. For those who want to learn more about the future of media, technology, and democracy, now is your chance! Our team members from the Open Technology Initiative will be participating in the following sessions:

Friday April 8, 2011

Guest post by Rob McCausland, author of the past post Mapping Community Television #3

The tragic death of Khaled Said—the 28-year-old who in June 2010 was dragged from an Internet cafe in Alexandria and beaten by the Egyptian police—was the event that galvanized young Egyptians, pushing them to share their grievances on Facebook. A group called "We Are All Khaled Said" quickly reached hundreds of thousands of members and played an instrumental role in promoting the protests that eventually swept Hosni Mubarak from power.

When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered her first major speech on Internet freedom in January 2010 little did she know about WikiLeaks and the yet-to-come revolts in Tunisia and Egypt.