An official website of the United States government
ABSTRACT The goal of this article is to offer framing for conversations about the role of measurement in informing public policy about the Internet. We review different stakeholders’ approaches to measurements and associated challenges, including the activities of U.S. government agencies. We show how taxonomies of existing harms can facilitate the search for clarity along the fraught path from identifying to measuring harms. Looking forward, we identify barriers to advancing our empirical grounding of Internet infrastructure to inform policy, societal challenges that create pressure to overcome these barriers, and steps that could facilitate measurement to support policymaking.
more »
« less
Challenges in measuring the Internet for the public Interest
The goal of this paper is to offer framing for conversations about the role of measurement in informing public policy about the Internet, the barriers to gathering measurements, public policy challenges that are creating pressure for reform in this space, and recommended actions that could facilitate gathering of measurements to support policy-making.
more »
« less
- PAR ID:
- 10356826
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- SSRN Electronic Journal
- ISSN:
- 1556-5068
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
The Affect Heuristic-Cultural Cognition Theory (AH-CCT) model and the Solution Aversion-based (SA) model both suggest affect, meaning feelings or discrete emotions about a target, mediates associations between ‘culture,’ such as political ideology or cultural biases, and risk responses, such as risk perceptions, protective behaviours, and supportive attitudes towards protective policy. However, the models differ respectively by defining negative affect as directed towards the hazard (‘hazard affect’) or a specific behaviour or policy response (‘solution aversion,’ negative affect about a proposed risk reduction method). We compare these models with longitudinal mediation analysis of U.S. COVID-19 survey data (n = 866 in smallest-sample wave). Solution aversion accounted for more associations of culture with risk perceptions, such as personal risk, collective risk, and risk severity; behaviour and behavioural intentions, regarding mask wearing, avoiding large public gatherings, and vaccination; and support for risk mitigation policies, regarding mask mandates, public gathering bans, and vaccination mandates. Statistically significant direct effects were rare and were mainly for egalitarian cultural bias; indirect effects occurred for egalitarians, political conservatives, and individualists. Implications for further research on risk responses are discussed relative to limited previous work on these affect-mediation models.more » « less
-
Public responsiveness to policy is contingent on there being a sufficient amount of clear and accurate information about policy available to citizens. It is of some significance then, that there are increasing concerns about limits being placed on media outlets around the world. We examine the impact of these limits on the public’s ability to respond meaningfully to policy by analyzing cross-national variation in the opinion–policy link. Using new measures on spending preferences from Wave 4 of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, merged with OECD data on government spending and Freedom House measures of press freedom, we assess the role of mass media in facilitating public responsiveness. We find evidence that when media are weak, so too is public responsiveness to policy. These results highlight the critical role that accurate, unfettered media can play in modern representative democracy.more » « less
-
This study provides conceptual clarity on open data users by connecting an empirical analysis of policy documents to emerging theoretical research on data publics. Releasing files to the public for reuse is the primary objective of policy on open government data. Recent public sphere scholarship provides insights into who reuses data by defining a data public as people who actively construct narratives with openly available digital sources. A content analysis of United States federal policy documents identified the language used to represent people who might reuse data. An inductive qualitative analysis of mandated digital strategy reports generated a taxonomy that characterizes people mentioned in open data policy. In addition to the taxonomy, this research contributes a set of propositions to predict data reuse based on these characteristics. The results encourage further dialog between public sphere and digital government scholars to establish testable explanations about data publics.more » « less
-
The public acknowledges the importance of water quality, and threats to water quality can provoke strong emotional responses. Despite this, the public often resists policies protecting water quality. Research with 349 US residents demonstrated that (1) emotions about specific water policies were more predictive of policy support than emotions about water quality and (2) hope about water policies was a particularly strong predictor of water policy support. In both between-person and within-person analyses, water-policy hope was a stronger predictor of water-policy support than water-policy anxiety, anger, and neutral affect–although these other emotions were related to water-policy support. These findings among water-policy emotions replicated results from a Pilot study with 148 US undergraduate students. The main study also demonstrated that water-policy support increased when policy descriptions explained how policies would improve water quality via hydro systems, and it did so by increasing feelings of water-policy hope. This research suggests that a full range of affective reactions to water policy and water quality should be considered when motivating support for policies protecting water quality.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3898347
