This book brings together a diverse, international array of contributors to explore the topics of news "quality" in the online age and the relationships between news organizations and enormously influential digital platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Covering topics ranging from internet incivility, crowdsourcing, and YouTube politics to regulations, algorithms, and AI, this book draws the key distinction between the news that facilitates democracy from news that undermines it. For students and scholars as well as journalists, policymakers, and media commentators, this important work engages a wide range of methodological and theoretical perspectives to define the key concept of "quality" in the news media.

Questions concerning the quality of media performance and the effectiveness of media policymaking often revolve around the extent to which the media system fulfills the values inherent in diversity and localism principles. This edited volume addresses challenges and issues relating to diversity in local media markets from a media law and policy perspective. Editor Philip M. Napoli provides a conceptual and empirical framework for assessing the success/failure of media markets and media outlets in fulfilling diversity and localism objectives.
Featuring well-known contributors from a variety of disciplines, including media, law, political science, and economics, "Media Diversity and Localism" explores the following topics:
*media ownership and media diversity and localism;
*conceptual and methodological issues in assessing media diversity and localism;
*minorities, media, and diversity; and
*contextualizing media diversity and localism: audience behavior and new technologies.
This substantive and timely volume speaks to scholars and researchers in the areas of media law and policy, political science, and all others interested in media regulation. It can also be used in a graduate seminar on media policy topics.

This book brings together a diverse, international array of contributors to explore the topics of news "quality" in the online age and the relationships between news organizations and enormously influential digital platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Covering topics ranging from internet incivility, crowdsourcing, and YouTube politics to regulations, algorithms, and AI, this book draws the key distinction between the news that facilitates democracy from news that undermines it. For students and scholars as well as journalists, policymakers, and media commentators, this important work engages a wide range of methodological and theoretical perspectives to define the key concept of "quality" in the news media.

Questions concerning the quality of media performance and the effectiveness of media policymaking often revolve around the extent to which the media system fulfills the values inherent in diversity and localism principles. This edited volume addresses challenges and issues relating to diversity in local media markets from a media law and policy perspective. Editor Philip M. Napoli provides a conceptual and empirical framework for assessing the success/failure of media markets and media outlets in fulfilling diversity and localism objectives. Featuring well-known contributors from a variety of disciplines, including media, law, political science, and economics, Media Diversity and Localism explores the following topics: *media ownership and media diversity and localism; *conceptual and methodological issues in assessing media diversity and localism; *minorities, media, and diversity; and *contextualizing media diversity and localism: audience behavior and new technologies. This substantive and timely volume speaks to scholars and researchers in the areas of media law and policy, political science, and all others interested in media regulation. It can also be used in a graduate seminar on media policy topics.

The focus theme section of this special issue addresses not only the impact of regulatory change on media market competition from an economic standpoint, but also the impact of regulatory change on competition in the "marketplace of ideas." While it is tempting to approach regulation and policy questions pertaining to media industries through the somewhat narrow lens of economics, policymakers, policy analysts, and scholars are all increasingly realizing that this is not a viable approach to promoting and sustaining a media system that effectively performs the full range of functions required of them in democratic societies. This collection of articles reflects this perspective through its attention to both economic competition and competition in the marketplace of ideas.
The general research section of this issue gathers research that is inspiring, moving beyond the scope of this issue's focus topic. Keeping with the aim to publish a broad array of articles on all aspects of media management, the five articles cover diverse subject matter and their research methodologies vary considerably. Taken as a whole, they constitute a significant contribution to media management scholarship.

Today's consumers have unprecedented choice in terms of the technologies and platforms that access, produce, and distribute media content. The development and overlap of television, the internet, and other media technologies is fragmenting and empowering media audiences more than ever. Building on his award-winning book, "Audience Economics," Philip M. Napoli maps the landscape of our current media environment and describes its challenge to traditional conceptions of the audience. He examines the redefinition of the industry-audience relationship by technologies that have moved the audience marketplace beyond traditional metrics. Media providers, advertisers, and audience measurement firms now deploy more sophisticated tools to gather and analyze audience information, focusing on factors rarely considered before, such as appreciation, recall, engagement, and behavior. Napoli explores the interplay between political and economic interests in the audience marketplace and their effect on audience evolution. He recounts the battles waged between stakeholders over the assessment of media audiences and their efforts to restrict the functionality of new technologies. As Napoli makes clear, the very meaning of the media audience continues to evolve in response to changing technological, economic, and political conditions.

Prometheus brought the gift of enlightenment to humanity and suffered for his benevolence. This collection takes on scholars’ Promethean view of themselves as selfless bringers of light and instead offers a new vision of public scholarship as service to society. Thomas J Billard and Silvio Waisbord curate essays from a wide range of specialties within the study of communication. Aimed at scholars and students alike, the contributors use approaches from critical meditations to case studies to how-to guides as they explore the possibilities of seeing shared knowledge not as a gift to be granted but as an imperative urging readers to address the problems of the world. Throughout the volume, the works show that a pivot to ideas of scholarship as public service is already underway in corners of communication studies across the country. Visionary and provocative, Public Scholarship in Communication Studies proposes a needed reconsideration of knowledge and a roadmap to its integration with community. Contributors: Elaine Almeida, Becca Beets, Thomas J Billard, Danielle K. Brown, Aymar Jean Christian, Stacey L. Connaughton, Paula Gardner, Larry Gross, Amy Jordan, Daniel Kreiss, Rachel Kuo, Susan Mancino, Shannon C. McGregor, Philip M. Napoli, Todd P. Newman, Srividya Ramasubramanian, Chad Raphael, Sue Robinson, Silvio Waisbord, Yidong Wang, and Holley Wilkin

A synergy between academia and activism has long been a goal of both scholars and advocacy organizations in communications research. The essays in Communications Research in Action demonstrate, for the first time in one volume, how an effective partnership between the two can contribute to a more democratic public sphere by helping to break down the digital divide to allow greater access to critical technologies, democratizing the corporate ownership of the media industry, and offering myriad opportunities for varied articulation of individuals' ideas.Essays spanning topics such as the effect of ownership concentration on children's television programming, the media's impact on community building, and the global consequences of communications research will not only be valuable to scholars, activists, and media policy makers but will also be instrumental in serving as a template for further exploration in collaboration.

Focusing on the electronic media -- television, radio, and the Internet -- "Audience Economics" bridges a substantial gap in the literature by providing an integrated framework for understanding the various businesses involved in generating and selling audiences to advertisers. Philip M. Napoli presents original research in order to answer several key questions:

- How are audiences manufactured, valued, and sold?

- How do advertisers and media firms predict the behavior of audiences?

- How has the process of measuring audiences evolved over time?

- How and why do advertisers assign different values to segments of the media audience?

- How does audience economics shape media content?

Examining the relationship between the four principal actors in the audience marketplace -- advertisers, media firms, consumers, and audience measurement firms -- Napoli explains the ways in which they interact with and mutually depend on each other. He also analyzes recent developments, such as the introduction of local people meters by Nielsen Media Research and the establishment and evolution of audience measurement systems for the Internet. A valuable resource for academics, students, policymakers, and media professionals, "Audience Economics" keeps pace with the rapid changes in media and audience-measurement technologies in order to provide a thorough understanding of the unique dynamics of the audience marketplace today.

Focusing on the electronic media -- television, radio, and the Internet -- "Audience Economics" bridges a substantial gap in the literature by providing an integrated framework for understanding the various businesses involved in generating and selling audiences to advertisers. Philip M. Napoli presents original research in order to answer several key questions:

- How are audiences manufactured, valued, and sold?

- How do advertisers and media firms predict the behavior of audiences?

- How has the process of measuring audiences evolved over time?

- How and why do advertisers assign different values to segments of the media audience?

- How does audience economics shape media content?

Examining the relationship between the four principal actors in the audience marketplace -- advertisers, media firms, consumers, and audience measurement firms -- Napoli explains the ways in which they interact with and mutually depend on each other. He also analyzes recent developments, such as the introduction of local people meters by Nielsen Media Research and the establishment and evolution of audience measurement systems for the Internet. A valuable resource for academics, students, policymakers, and media professionals, "Audience Economics" keeps pace with the rapid changes in media and audience-measurement technologies in order to provide a thorough understanding of the unique dynamics of the audience marketplace today.

Facebook, a platform created by undergraduates in a Harvard dorm room, has transformed the ways millions of people consume news, understand the world, and participate in the political process. Despite taking on many of journalism's traditional roles, Facebook and other platforms, such as Twitter and Google, have presented themselves as tech companies-and therefore not subject to the same regulations and ethical codes as conventional media organizations. Challenging such superficial distinctions, Philip M. Napoli offers a timely and persuasive case for understanding and governing social media as news media, with a fundamental obligation to serve the public interest. Social Media and the Public Interest explores how and why social media platforms became so central to news consumption and distribution as they met many of the challenges of finding information-and audiences-online. Napoli illustrates the implications of a system in which coders and engineers drive out journalists and editors as the gatekeepers who determine media content. He argues that a social media-driven news ecosystem represents a case of market failure in what he calls the algorithmic marketplace of ideas. To respond, we need to rethink fundamental elements of media governance based on a revitalized concept of the public interest. A compelling examination of the intersection of social media and journalism, Social Media and the Public Interest offers valuable insights for the democratic governance of today's most influential shapers of news.

Rapid changes in communication technologies are straining the existing system of electronic media regulation. Despite the increasing pace of technological change, the electronic media continue to be regulated under a well-established set of guiding principles. Principles such as the First Amendment, the public interest, the marketplace of ideas, diversity, competition, localism and universal service continue to serve as the primary objectives for policymakers and as the focal points for contemporary policy controversies. This volume focuses on these principles, examining their underlying motivations and assumptions, their central components, their different interpretive approaches and their continued applicability in a rapidly changing electronic media environment. Central to this book's analysis is the need for more thorough and rigorous application of these principles as tools for policy analysis, rather than primarily as rhetorical devices for justifying policy outcomes. Toward this end, the book explicitly links each of these principles with communication policy analysis and illustrates how the dynamics of the policymaking process undermine the analytical utility of the foundation principles.

In . . . And Communications for All, 16 leading communications policy scholars present a comprehensive telecommunications policy agenda for the new federal administration. This agenda emphasizes the potential of information technologies to improve democratic discourse, social responsibility, and the quality of life along with the means by which it can be made available to all Americans. Schejter has assembled an analysis of the reasons for the failure of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and offers an international benchmark for the future of telecommunications. Addressing a range of topics, including network neutrality, rural connectivity, media ownership, minority ownership, spectrum policy, universal broadband policy, and media for children, it articulates a comprehensive vision for the United States as a twenty-first-century information society that is both internally inclusive and globally competitive.

In . . . And Communications for All, 16 leading communications policy scholars present a comprehensive telecommunications policy agenda for the new federal administration. This agenda emphasizes the potential of information technologies to improve democratic discourse, social responsibility, and the quality of life along with the means by which it can be made available to all Americans. Schejter has assembled an analysis of the reasons for the failure of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and offers an international benchmark for the future of telecommunications. Addressing a range of topics, including network neutrality, rural connectivity, media ownership, minority ownership, spectrum policy, universal broadband policy, and media for children, it articulates a comprehensive vision for the United States as a twenty-first-century information society that is both internally inclusive and globally competitive.