Strategies for Media Reform ─ International Perspectives

How does Free Press fight for network neutrality in the US? How did the Electronic Frontier Foundation contribute to the defeat of SOPA/PIPA? How did Openmedia.ca impede the surveillance apparatus in Canada? How did the Media Reform Coalition attempt to intervene in efforts to democratize media ownership following the phone hacking crisis in the UK? How did the Campaign for Media Reform organize against media monopolies in Taiwan?

Media reform plays an increasingly important role in the struggle for social justice. Yet media reformers confront formidable challenges: entrenched commercial interests and media conglomerates; neoliberal governments; a general public that is often disenfranchised and not focused on issues of media reform; an often hostile media; and, as with all activists, difficult questions concerning how best to organize to achieve change. As battles are fought over the future of investigative journalism, media ownership, spectrum management, speech rights, broadband access, network neutrality, the surveillance apparatus and digital literacy, what effective strategies can be used in the pursuit of effective media reform?

This collection brings together strategies for advancing media reform objectives, prepared by 33 scholars and activists working in and/or studying in more than 25 countries, including: Canada, Mexico and the United States; Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Uruguay, and Venezuela; Iceland; Germany, Switzerland and the UK; Burma/Myanmar, Taiwan, Thailand and the Philippines; Egypt, Ghana, Israel and Qatar.
This volume will serve as a vital resource for scholars and activists alike, looking to better understand the concept of media reform and how it is being advanced around the world.

Des Freedman is Professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author ofThe Contradictions of Media Power (Bloomsbury 2014) and The Politics of Media Policy(Polity 2008) and co-author (with James Curran and Natalie Fenton) of Misunderstanding the Internet (Routledge 2012). He is also the chair of the Media Reform Coalition.

Jonathan Obar is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada. Dr. Obar has published in a variety of academic journals about the impact digital technologies have on civil liberties, civic engagement and the inclusiveness of public culture. He has worked with a number of organizations that fight for media reform including: Free Press, New America Foundation, Openmedia.ca, Open Society Foundations, Prometheus Radio Project and the Wikimedia Foundation.

Cheryl Martens is Senior Lecturer in the Media School at Bournemouth University, UK. Her research and publications concentrate on the sociology and political economy of communication and media policy. She is the co-editor ofThe International Political Economy of Communication (Palgrave 2014) and is currently working on a documentary on media reform in South America.

Robert W. McChesney is Professor of Communication at the University of Illinois Center for Global Studies. He is the author of many books includign the recently releasedDigital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy (New Press, 2013).