"The 1996 Telecommunications Act was an attempt to increase competition among telecommunications providers in the United States by reducing regulatory barriers to market entry. This competition was expected to drive innovation in the telecommunications sector and reap economic benefits for both American consumers and telecommunications providers. The legislation, however, had a markedly different impact. While many of the more aggressive providers enjoyed sharp short-term rises in stock market values, they soon faced sudden collapse, leaving consumers with little or no long-term benefit. In Competition and Chaos, Robert W. Crandall analyzes the impact of the 1996 act on economic welfare in the United States and how the act and its antecedents affected the major telecommunications providers. He argues that the act was far too stringent, inviting the Federal Communications Commission and state regulators to micromanage competitive entry into local telecommunications markets. Combined with the bursting of the dot.com and telecom stock market bubbles, this aggressive policy invited new and existing firms to invest billions of dollars unwisely, leading to the 2001-02 collapse of equity values throughout the sector. New entrants into the market invested more than $50 billion in unproductive assets that were quickly wiped out through massive failures. The 1996 act allowed the independent long-distance companies, such as MCI and AT&T, to live a few years longer. But today they are a threatened species, caught in a downward spiral of declining prices and substantial losses. The industry is preparing for an intense battle for market share among three sets of carriers: the wireless companies, the local telephone carriers, and the cable television businesses. Each has its own particular advantage in one of the three major segments of the market-voice, data, and video-but none is assured a clear path to dominance. Although the telecom stock market collapse is now history and the survivors are investing once again, Crandall concludes that the regulators have failed to adapt to the chaos to which they contributed. "

Technologies develop rapidly and reach hurricane levels of velocity but quality E-Content and innovative applications lag behind. This book addresses the question how content industries change within a digital environment and what role information and communication technologies play in transforming the competitive landscape. The authors argue that post-industrial societies tend to pay substantial amounts for equipment and gadgets but invest far too little in the quality of the content. As a result, much effort is and has to be spent on the enhancement of E-Content.

The contributions give an elaborate overview of:
- the specifics, challenges and prospects of content in the network economy;
- market developments of digital media services;
- paid content business models;
- impacts on scientific publishing;
- developments in the field of E-Learning;
- the interplay between technology and content with the example of interactive digital TV;
- the mobile games market;
- emerging new cross media markets;
- the need to enhance the usability of websites and mobile applications;
- how digital applications might be used to capture and store our personal experiences.

A final chapter shows the prospects of the European E-Content market and gives an overview of valuable initiatives and resources dealing with the topic of E-Content.

This book examines how election news reporting has changed over the last half century in Ireland by means of a unique dataset involving 25m words from newspapers as well as radio and television coverage. The authors examine reporting in terms of framing, tone and the distribution of coverage.They also focus on how the economy has affected election coverage as well as media reporting of leaders and personalities, gender and the effect of the commercial basis of media outlets. The findings - drawn from a machine learning computer system involving a huge content analysis study - will interest academics as well as politicians and policymakers internationally. -- .

This collection provides access to up to date, very high quality research and critical perspectives on China s CCIs on an industry by industry basis. Industries dealt with by this collection include: advertising, architecture, art and antiques, computer games, crafts, design, designer fashion, film and video, music, performing arts, publishing, software, TV and radio, digital media. The collection combines recently translated work by acknowledged experts on individual sectors of the creative industries from within China with more critical work by internationally-based experts on China s CCIs and their implications beyond China. The collection draws on the expertise of research academics and of industry based practitioners. China s Creative and Cultural Industries Reports is a Lens on China providing fresh, new material and perspectives on a key area of cultural and economic development in one of the world s fastest growing economies. Publication in the form of a collection, which could be sold in multiple of traditional and digital formats, either as a volume or as individual reports, makes it possible for readers to select the format most relevant to their interests. "

The news media and the state are locked in a battle of wills in the world's emerging democratic states. It is a struggle that will determine whether or not democracy flourishes or withers in the 21st century. Using a number of case studies, including South Africa, this book evaluates what is at stake.

This core introductory text offers a comprehensive overview of how news has been theorised and understood in key Media Studies traditions. It explores how news is constructed, distributed and received and includes up-to-date examples and discussion of contemporary issues such as the uses of new technologies in news media.

A fascinating survey that shows how America's media and politics have influenced each other over the last 200 years. Is our president elected by the people or the media? Why has voter turnout dropped from 63 percent in 1960 to less than 55 percent in 2000? Is it because we rely on TV campaign coverage that the television industry admits is superficial? Can the American political system survive in the media? Where mass media and politics intersect is a distinctly American brand of political communication. Media and Politics in America: A Reference Handbook examines the major events, people, controversies, and resources of political communication from the Revolutionary War to the election of 2000. It follows the adoption of the First Amendment, the emergence of the Penny Press and women's suffrage, to the selection of presidential candidates, the advent of radio and television, and the influence of the Internet. Readers will find a section of government documents, Supreme Court cases, and campaign statistics, media trends, and public opinion polls. The resources listing and directory of media and political organizations are exhaustive in this account of two centuries of American poli

Of all the Caribbean countries, Cuba possesses the most voluminous body of literature on mass communications. Following an informative introduction to the history of Cuban mass communications, this book is organized into three parts: resources, contemporary perspectives and historical perspectives. The resources section covers anthologies, bibliographies, catalogues, collections and other research materials. The contemporary perspectives of Cuban mass communications includes broadcasting, comic and graphic arts, film, freedom of the press, news agencies, popular culture, print media, Radio and Television Marti, training and education, and women and the media. The third section pulls together items of historical significance. To highlight the work of individual journalists, magazines and newspapers, 45 journalists and specific magazines and newspaper titles are singled out. This bibliography is representative in covering books, periodicals, dissertations, theses, and conference papers. Most of the more than 4,000 citations are in English or Spanish. The compiling editor completes this reference with author and general subject indices.

Dialogue as a Means of Collective Communication offers a cross-disciplinary approach to examining dialogue as a communicative medium. Presented in five parts, the book takes the reader on a journey of exploring the power and potential of dialogue as a means for communication. In particular, this volume comes at a time when the global society's attention has been directed to creating more productive conversations in the name of world peace and harmony. It provides a unique new work on dialogue that brings the reader into a "dialogue with dialogue," offering an opportunity to understand the communicative potential of dialogue.
In the book, readers are introduced to five sections: Section I examines the historical and cultural perspectives of conversation. This examination helps to create a foundation for a deeper study of the emergent and salient aspects of conversation as it relates to cultural creativity and human systems design. Sections II offers the reader an examination of dialogue through different philosophical and theoretical perspectives as well as methodological ideas related to conversation. Section III explores different modalities of conversation and the application of design conversation within and across various types of design settings and human experiences. Section IV examines the field of practice as related to use of different forms of conversation. Here various authors will share their different approaches to conversation and their reflections and insights in using conversation in a variety of settings. Concluding the book, Section V reflectively examines the authors' contributions to the book and provides the reader with a focus on the future.

Whereas glasnost in the Soviet Union is an attempt to end a single autocractic state control, in Great Britain a complex network of interlinked factors have put the freedom of the press under recent threat. This volume contains a series of essays analyzing the current position of censorship in Britain and suggesting solutions to the problem, taken from a wide spectrum of political and social fields.;The contributors argue that censorship has increased in recent years, and the freedom of the press is under greater attack now than for more than a century, due to increasingly autocractic government control, narrow ownership of the press, changing secrecy laws and other factors.;Norman Buchan and Tricia Sumner worked together for severla years developing Labour Party policy on arts, media and cultural matters.

- Centers artificial intelligence as a pathway for media studies students, scholars and practitioners to navigate the broad terrain of software practice. - Examines the impact of software on everyday life as it traces the industrial development and migrations of AI and the connectedness of play to broader cultural, social and economic forces. - Connects history and theory to practice through a number of illustrative, culturally relevant media objects and case studies that will be familiar and engaging to many students. - With its focus on applied artificial intelligence in popular and public culture, it bridges the fields of software studies, science and technology studies, and video game studies.

This volume provides an important update to our current understanding of politics and the internet in a variety of new contexts, both geographically and institutionally. The subject of e-democracy has morphed over the years from speculative and optimistic accounts of a future heightened direct citizen involvement in political decision-making and an increasingly withered state apparatus, to more prosaic investigations of party and governmental website content and micro level analyses of voters' online activities. Rather than levelling the communications and participation playing field, most studies concluded that existing patterns of bias and power distribution were being repeated online, with the one exception of a genuine change in the potential for protest and e-activism. Across all of these accounts, the question remains whether the internet is a levelling communication tool that elevates the profile of marginalised players in the political system, or whether it is a medium that simply reinforces existing power and participatory biases. While employing case studies from various global perspectives, this book investigates the role of digital media and competitive advantage, campaigns and the effect of social media, online communication as way of fomenting nonviolent revolutions and the undeniable and important role of the internet on democracy around the world.

 The dynamics of the digital economy in the US, Europe and Japan are rather different. Some EU countries come close to the USA as the leading OECD country in the new economy, but Japan faces particular problems in catching-up digitally. Information and communication technology will affect productivity growth, production, the financial system and trade. Setting adequate rules for the digital economy - at the national and international level - is a key challenge for industrialized countries. Moreover, cultural and organizational challenges will also have to be met.

Global Mobile Satellite Systems - A Systems Overview makes mobile satellite communications understandable for communication engineers, candidates for an engineering degree, technicians, managers, and other decision makers such as financiers and regulators. It provides a systems oriented top-level view of mobile satellite communications. In particular, it focuses on Global Mobile Satellite Systems (GMSS) including active programs such as Globalstar, IRIDIUM, ORBCOMM, ACeS, and Thuraya, or so-called the second generation mobile satellite systems class. The authors start with a brief description of three generations of satellite systems in use or planned in the telecommunications industry. Selected systems architectural trades are identified and explained to illustrate how various GMSS systems are formulated, developed and evaluated. It includes an examination of market demand trends, business trades, regulatory issues as well as technical considerations.

Major issues are examined in trade study style to provide easy access to key information. Key systems drivers such as orbit trades between LEO's, MEO's, and GEO's, frequency, protocols, customer bases, and regulatory and engineering issues are included. This book should appeal to individuals interested in the basic elements of Global Mobile Satellite Systems.

Risk, anxiety and moral panic are endemic to contemporary societies and media forms. How do these phenomena manifest in a place like South Africa, which features heightened insecurity, deep inequality and accelerated social change? What happens when cultures of fear intersect with pervasive systems of gender, race and class? Worrier state investigates four case studies in which fear and anxiety appear in radically different ways: the far right myth of 'white genocide'; so-called 'Satanist' murders of young women; an urban legend about township crime; and social theories about safety and goodness in the suburbs. Falkof foregrounds the significance of emotion as a socio-political force, emphasising South Africa's imbrication within globalised conditions of anxiety and thus its fundamental and often-ignored hypermodernity. The book offers a bold and creative perspective on the social roles of fear and emotion in South Africa and thus on everyday life in this complex place. -- .

This study assesses the potential that telecommunications advances hold for rural America and is the outcome of the third in a series of policy research projects into issues relating telecommunications policy and economic development undertaken by research teams of faculty and students at the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs and College of Communication, University of Texas at Austin. All three projects have been concerned with telecommunications at two levels: the effects of telecommunications advances on our economy and society and the policy framework that has resulted from divestiture of AT&T. The first project studied state telecommunication policy and resulted in the publication of "Telecommunications Policy and Economic Development: The New State Role" (Praeger, 1989); the second, which dealt with cities and large telecommunications users, produced "The New Urban Infrastructure: Cities and TelecommunicationS" (Praeger, 1990). Telecommunications and rural development has been much more frequently researched in Third World countries than in advanced industrialized ones and this volume represents a significant contribution to the literature on the subject.

The findings are divided into four general research areas. Following an introduction, Chapter Two looks at some fascinating telecommunications applications in American rural businesses from Wal-Mart, to traditional rural businesses like the lumber industry, to the opening of new businesses like telemarketing. Chapter Three assesses the use of telecommunication for delivery of public services from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to health care and distance education. Chapter Four asserts that many of the benefits of telecommunications for rural America will only be realized if the small independent or cooperative telephone companies remain healthy and progressive. The substantial contribution to community development, from community revitalization and regional cooperation to infrastructure upgrading, is the focus of Chapter Five. A final chapter offers conclusions. This is required reading for students, scholars, and practitioners in the fields of communications/telecommunications and government.

This unique study is the first to focus specifically on political communication ethics. Denton has brought together a group of works that address ethical concerns related to political communication, including political culture, campaigns, media, advertising, ghostwriting, discourse, politicians, and new technologies. All of the contributors raise a number of salient questions and discuss various methods, criteria, and issues for exploring and addressing ethical concerns. These ten chapters cover a range of topics that include the ethics of popular culture, political advocacy, ethics and morality in American presidential campaigns, virtue and character, the role of television in modern politics, the ethical implications of ghostwriting, polls and computer technology, and narrative form in political news. The central theme that emerges from these varied contributions is that we cannot depend on politicians, their handlers, or the media to correct real or perceived problems of ethics in American politics and that the greatest threat to democracy is neglect of the public forum. In analyzing the weak ethical links in the American political process, the authors call for a return to civic culture based on communication and persuasion, active citizen participation, and a high level of information. This work will be an important new resource for courses in political and mass communication, political ethics, and political science, as well as for students of sociology and American studies.

This book is a rare and unusually reflective insider account of the transformational challenges of the cultural industries over the past 15 years. Opening with a fresh new perspective on music industry history, it explores how the industrial world evolves more by narrative plausibility than by precision, recognizing that corporate identity, purpose, and power can be both reinforced and subverted by modifications to various cultural master-plots and their traditional heroes and villains. Of most interest are the insights into the strategic struggles faced by corporate managers in the cultural industries, and by intellectual property policymakers dealing with the fascinating and seismic new millennium shifts in technology, communications, and related social behaviour. Illustrating how a satisfactory 'post-private' master-narrative for the digital age has yet to emerge, the book also makes a valuable contribution to loosening the industrial-political deadlock in the debate over copyright reform. It is essential reading for cultural industry practitioners, policymakers and scholars alike, indeed for anyone who takes an interest in the changing processes which affect the creation and dissemination of knowledge and culture.

This book reassesses central topics in cultural economics: Public finance and public choice theory as the basis for decision-making in cultural and media policy, the role of welfare economics in cultural policy, the economics of creative industries, the application of empirical testing to the performing arts and the economics of cultural heritage. Cultural economics has made enormous progress over the last 50 years, to which Alan Peacock made an important contribution. The volume brings together many of the senior figures, whose contributions to the various special fields of cultural economics have been instrumental in the development of the subject, and others reflecting on the subject's progress and assessing its future direction. Alan Peacock has been one of the leading lights of cultural economics and in this volume Ilde Rizzo and Ruth Towse and the other contributors ably capture the import of his contributions in a broader context of political economy. In doing so, they offer an overview of progress in cultural economics over the last forty years. Tyler Cowen, Professor of Economics and Director of the Mecatus Center, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA A fitting tribute to Professor Sir Alan Peacock's inspiring intellect leadership and his outstandingly rich and varied legacy in the domain of cultural economics, this book draws together illuminating analyses and insights from leading cultural economists about the role and value of this dynamic and increasingly policy-relevant field of enquiry. Gillian Doyle, Professor of Media Economics and Director of Centre for Cultural Policy Research, University of Glasgow, UK

Crumbling business models mean news media structures must change. Gavin Ellis explores the past and present use of newspaper trusts - drawing on case studies such as the Guardian, the Irish Times and the Pulitzer Prize winning Tampa Bay Times - to make the case for a form of ownership dedicated to sustaining high quality journalism.

The companies that provide the Internet to the rest of the world do not have the luxury of setting high expectations and assuming they will be met. These Internet infrastructure companies (IICs) are responsible for delivering the Internet's promise, including everything from eBusiness and mobile Internet applications to optical services and high-speed access. The Internet's audience takes this promise for granted, and IICs face the daunting challenge of making the Internet, and networks like it, do what the audience expects them to. To meet the expectations they face, IICs must harness the power of their operations support systems (OSSs) - the software systems in the background they use to create, manage, maintain, manipulate and adapt their networks to serve customers reliably and rapidly.
Broadband Infrastructure: The Ultimate Guide to Understanding and Delivering OSS/BSS is a "how to" book for Internet infrastructure companies to help them prepare for the decisions they will face when constructing their core OSS strategies and infrastructure. This book provides a source of reference and education to learn the language, methods, and technologies associated with the OSS market. It examines the Internet infrastructure supply chain and how it will be automated. Finally, it brings together a wealth of proven knowledge and advice, gathered from BusinessEdge Solutions' extensive OSS experience, that broadband providers can use to minimize their OSS risks while maximizing their ability to differentiate and compete.

Policymakers globally are seeing the potential for future growth through embedding greater creativity across their economies. Yet much academic research has focused on the creative industries as traditionally defined, rather than looking at the bigger picture. CCI's research has been the exception, making significant conceptual and empirical breakthroughs in our understanding of creative work in the wider economy. This volume should be required reading for students, researchers and practitioners of innovation policy.' - Hasan Bakhshi, Director, Creative Economy in Policy & Research, Nesta, UK'Hearn and his colleagues have amassed an impressive array of empirical evidence, theoretical insights and policy prescriptions for understanding how creative workers are contributing to a variety of industries outside the purely cultural or creative industry sectors. The scope of their investigations includes healthcare, banking, manufacturing, digital technology, creative services, journalism, media and communication, and higher education. This book significantly advances our understanding of how creative workers are utilizing their capabilities to contribute broadly to the economy. It also offers important insights into professional learning for creative workers and shows how education can prepare future generations of creative study students to succeed in today s knowledge based economy.' - Robert DeFillippi, Suffolk University, US Creative workers are employed in sectors outside the creative industries often in greater numbers than within the creative field. This is the first book to explore the phenomena of the embedded creative and creative services through a range of sectors, disciplines, and perspectives. Despite the emergence of the creative worker, there is very little known about the work life of these 'creatives', and why companies seek to employ them. This book asks: how does creative work actually 'embed' into a service or product supply chain? What are creative services? Which industries are they working in? This collection explores these questions in relation to innovation, employment and education, using various methods and theoretical approaches, in order to examine the value of the embedded creative and to discover the implications of education and training for creative workers. This book will be of interest to practitioners, policy makers and industry leaders in the creative industries, in particular digital media, application development, design, journalism, media and communication. It will also appeal to academics and scholars of innovation, cultural studies, business management and labour studies. Contributors include: D. Bennett, R. Bridgstock, J. Coffey, S. Cunningham, S. Fitzgerald, A. Freeman, B. Goldsmith, G. Hearn, J. Pagan, P. Petocz, A. Podkalicka, J. Potts, A. Rainnie, J. Rodgers, J.H.P. Rodrigues, T. Shehadeh, D. Swan, O. Zelenko