TY - JOUR
AU1 - Gangadharan, Seeta, Peña
AB - Abstract This article examines the concept of translation, which refers to the work of civil society and state actors in linking the discursive activities of publics inside and outside the rule-making system. Using interview material and textual analysis of key documents, this article examines public participation in the 2002–2007 media ownership debate. Despite restrictive, conventional practices in administrative procedure, minority leadership and civil society groups supported the emergence of public opposition to ownership deregulation. While opposition did not prevent deregulation, it shaped the broader context in which publics evaluated agency decisions. This case suggests that translation is both a process and an outcome and that support of publics requires constant renewal and reinvention. In the past decade, public participation in controversial communication policy-making at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States has become a significant occurrence. From network neutrality to low-power radio, ordinary individuals are expressing their concerns about communication technologies and communication infrastructures. But while the welcome pages of prominent news sites and the campaign platforms of political candidates increasingly take note of citizen interest, scholarship remains only occasionally interested in civil society–policy-maker interactions in the domain of communication regulation, featuring few writings about the implications of democratizing policy processes (Obar, 2010; Obar & Schejter, 2010). The idea and practice of public participation are, however, critical issues for the field of communication. First, FCC policy-making—including rule-making, the specific form of policy-making discussed in this article—involves path-determining choices about communication infrastructures and practices. As a result, rule-making ought to square with basic expectations of fairness and justice that define democratic culture. Second, although the democratic nature of policy-making is a concern for all policy domains, it is especially salient in the case of the FCC. The agency operates under a constitutional system which guarantees free expression by and for citizens. How publics speak, hear, and are heard constitute the agency's very reason-for-being. The study of the role of publics in communication policy-making illuminates the constraints and possibilities of decision making at the FCC. In the following article, I focus discussion of public participation on the idea of translation—a critical discursive practice that links publics and policy-makers and that illuminates the ways in which publics matter to policy processes and outcomes.1The concept presumes that both civil society and state actors share responsibility in helping publics and policy-makers make sense of one another's concerns. I use translation as a normative lens through which to consider civil society and FCC interactions, specifically the media ownership debate between 2002 and 2007. The 6-year period marks one of the FCC's most contentious, visible rule-making proceedings in its more than 75 years of existence. As evidenced by in-depth interviews2and textual analysis of key government, civil society, and press documents, the debate demonstrates the discursive work of civil society actors and “minority commissioners”3at the FCC in amplifying the presence and power of publics opposition to ownership deregulation. This nexus of support helped shift the routines of policy debate and dented expectations of pro market advocates. But it also fell short of preventing ownership deregulation. Translation and communication policy-making The idea of translation stems from a normative claim that meaningful participation corresponds to the development of public concerns, arguments, and proposals. Furthermore, these concerns should inform policy deliberations and decisions. Translation is tied to a pragmatic understanding of publics and political systems—that is, the concept neither expects citizens to become as informed or eloquent as traditional stakeholders (such as technical or legal experts) nor demands policy-makers to be solely responsible for meaningful inclusion of all affected stakeholders. Building from political theorist Iris Marion Young (2006, 2000), whose work highlights the heterogeneous ways in which civil society and state actors support publics, the concept of translation sees civil society groups and policy-makers as jointly responsible for making sense of public concerns and connecting and elevating these concerns in policy discussion.4 Young alluded to the importance of translation in her pragmatic critique of deliberative democracy and theories of the public sphere. For her, the idea of a single public sphere, such as the view originally held by Cohen (1997) and Habermas (1989), is unrealistic with the day-to-day affairs of complex, large-scale democracies. Conversations about how individuals and communities want to coexist in society and solve problems happen across both space and time. The model of a single public sphere fails to account for the diverse nature of discourse. In addition, Young argued, the existence of spaces for discussion does not mean all participants in discussion equally enter into conversation. Given a long history of systematic, institutionalized oppression of certain groups, a site of discussion that is open to all interested individuals may neglect some individuals and render them invisible and disempowered as conversation is occurring. As a result, Young suggested that civil society and state actors not only have a responsibility to facilitate these conversations, as Habermas (1996) argued, but also to link these discourses across time and space, across public spheres, and between public spheres and sites of political decision making. The idea of translation elaborates upon Young's interest in linkages, focusing on communicative activities that facilitate understanding, visibility, and power of publics. It involves the support of publics as they develop, make sense of themselves, and link to one another and to sites of political decision making. For one site of public discussion to become known to another site of public discussion, or for a conversation in one corner of civil society to be made understandable to those in another public sphere, someone or something needs to bridge the gap. To avoid the creation of “parochial, separatist enclaves” (Young, 2000, p. 172), publics require translators or acts of translation that thematize the concerns expressed in public discussions, amplify the contents of these conversations with other sites of discussion and with political decision makers, and enable public concerns to be considered alongside other arguments before power holders. To be clear, civil society actors are not the only translators for publics. Because civil society actors are vulnerable to state and market forces and cannot always sustain themselves, democratic societies will work better when state actors engage publics and enable activities that help publics speak and be heard and understood. In other words, state actors in a political system also bear responsibility for supporting publics. Like the wide range of activities available to civil society groups, state actors engage publics in a variety of ways that are sensitive to the needs of individuals and communities. They have the power to assist publics and provide support similar to the civil society activities mentioned above—activities that allow citizens to speak, be heard, and be understood. State actors can be translators, too, supporting public knowledge and educating individuals and communities so they are grounded as they enter into discussion about collective problems and solutions.5 Translation and rulemaking From the perspective of communication regulation, the idea of translation sheds light on the actors who speak for public spheres and the activities in which they engage when doing representative work. It draws attention to the qualities of these groups and to the extent of their connections with individuals and communities impacted by an existing or proposed regulation. In addition, the concept highlights the manner by which claims and proposals of one site of discussion translate and are made understandable to the next. Applied to rule-making, the idea of translation exposes the fact that in policy-making, especially that of a broad nature, administrative procedures for participation are not a sufficient safeguard for the meaningful inclusion of publics in policy-making. In the United States, rule-making constitutes a unique form of decision making that emulates judicial and legislative processes. A set of procedures, referred to as the notice-and-comment system, requires the FCC to announce the details of a rule-making and collect input designed to help the agency understand a wide range of facts and values. In this sense, rule-making emulates some aspects of law making: Rule-making is open to all interested parties, not just ones involved in a dispute. However, policy-makers are not bound to a rule-making record as they would be to votes in a popular election. Provided that its reasoning is neither arbitrary nor capricious (Administrative Procedure Act, 1946), the agency can also exercise discretion when formulating a decision and draw from knowledge outside of the rule-making record. Accordingly, rule-making involves a form of judicial reasoning: The FCC must make rules based on the merits of arguments at its disposal, but it is partially insulated from the pressures of popular will. From the perspective of inclusiveness—again, the value on which the notion of translation rests—a notice-and-comment system neglects ordinary individuals and communities (also referred to as nontraditional stakeholders) in the rule-making system. It suffers from two main flaws. First, it anticipates participation by technical and legal experts, since administrative law only requires that the FCC respond to substantive comments in a rule-making record. Substantive comments are mainly defined by the likelihood that they will be a point of contention in litigation that disputes the reasonableness of an agency determination. Second, the notice-and-comment system requirement is strictly procedural: As long as the agency shows that it has given notice, collected comments, created a short summary of the record, and responded to the substantive arguments in the record, the agency will be deemed accountable, unless the final decision fails a legal test of arbitrariness and capriciousness. But ordinary individuals' and communities' contributions end up being superfluous; the notice-and-comment system offers them the opportunity to participate in participation (Arnstein, 2003/1969). Although the opportunity to participate exists and is open to all concerned, it renders some participants invisible and less powerful than other, more legally and technically versed—the traditional stakeholders, in other words. As a normative framework, the concept of translation addresses the weaknesses of the notice-and-comment system. It focuses on the interplay between the rule-making system and discussion that occurs in civil society. Translation draws attention to commissioners, staff, and civil society groups that engage—or avoid—discursive work within and between sites of public discussion. It highlights the extent to which policy problems, proposals, and decisions are converted into language that publics and their representatives understand. It demands context to the various stages of a rule-making proceeding, so that inputs into a rule-making record are not merely noticed as having happened but rather put into dialogue with a larger set of claims put forward by traditional and nontraditional stakeholders alike. In the next pages, I turn to the case of the media ownership debate and highlight translational activities that took place over a 6-year period. The media ownership debate in the 2000s Between 2002 and 2007, the FCC engaged in two landmark proceedings which concerned media ownership rules. The motivation for these proceedings came from the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which stipulates that the FCC must periodically review whether existing structural regulations—ownership restrictions related to broadcast media—should be maintained, modified, or eliminated (Federal Communications Commission, 2002a, 2002b). These rules are significant in that they establish parameters for market behavior of media corporations and prevent any one company from acquiring too large of a market share, either on a local or national level. When the agency commenced the Third Biennial Review of Broadcast Ownership Rules in 2002, the most comprehensive review of ownership rules in the history of the agency (Federal Communications Commission, 2002b), the notion that ordinary individuals and communities might have a say in how or whether media corporations should be subject to market controls was foreign. Since the 1980s, ownership restrictions weakened considerably, making media corporations the most present and powerful stakeholders in the debate. Just a year prior to the Third Biennial Review, the courts agreed with major networks that a cap on the percentage of audience share held by a single company nationwide, represented an arbitrary threshold and ordered the FCC to revisit national ownership limits (Fox v. FCC, 2002; see also Federal Communications Commission, 2002a). In a separate but related case, the courts agreed with the pro market logic of a mid sized media conglomerate, calling on the FCC to reconsider its local cross-ownership arrangements (Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. v. FCC, 2002). The agency decided to amend a rule established in the 1940s and welcomed mergers between emerging networks and one of the major four, incumbent networks (Federal Communications Commission, 2001). The conditions for public awareness of the issue of media consolidation and ownership deregulation were also lacking. A quick scan of news coverage on the effects of media mergers or media consolidation illustrates this anemia. For example, from January 2000 till the day before the 2002 Biennial Review of Broadcast Ownership Rules were announced, most broadcast segments that mentioned ownership were business or financial market oriented reporting. Only 20% of stories (62 of 300) culled from radio and television transcripts available to the Lexis-Nexis database targeted general news audiences.6Coverage was also thin among alternative news media. A search using the same key words in Alternative Press Watch, a database that contains several hundred titles of alternative newsweeklies, yielded only four stories in the same time period. A search in the Alternative Press Index, which includes 500 journals focused on social, political, and economic change, produced only 24 news stories. The relative isolation of the ownership debate from public discourse did not last. Despite efforts by majority commissioners and everyday practices by bureaucratic staff to corral public participation to the usual suspects in rule-making, the Third Biennial Review and, later, the First Quadrennial Review of Media Ownership Rules involved ordinary individuals and communities in ways that forced the agency not only to reconsider how it incorporated public concern but also to acknowledge the contents of those concerns beyond what conventional administrative practices demanded. In the remaining pages of this paper, I detail the push and pull between publics and the agency, contrasting conventional administrative practices with translational activities to elevate public concern and shape—albeit, incompletely—regulatory outcomes. Conventional administrative practices at the FCC: The Third Biennial Review Decision-making power at the FCC lies with five political appointees or commissions as well as with bureaucratic staff who research and review evidence and draft rules for commissioners to vote upon. During the 2002 review, majority commissioners and bureaucratic staff relied on the logic of administrative law to simultaneously accommodate and justify exclusion of ordinary individuals' arguments from substantive consideration in the debate. That is, key decision-making leadership used administrative procedure to show that participation had been offered, while downplaying the substance of citizen concern for media consolidation. A key argument used to set aside public concerns the FCC's accountability to the courts. Throughout the proceeding Chairman Powell emphasized the volume of public comments submitted to the record. At the close of the reply-comment period on February 5, 2003, Powell, for example, noted: I am enormously pleased so many citizens have chosen to participate in the broadcast ownership proceeding. The number of comments is staggering—13,000 from the general public alone. It is gratifying to witness first hand the unparalleled opportunities technology now provides the American public to participate in the democratic process. (Powell quoted in Federal Communications Commission, 2003a, p. 1) He continued: “This record clearly demonstrates that in the digital age, you don't need a 19th century whistle stop tour to hear from America” (Powell quoted in Federal Communications Commission, 2003a, p. 1). Powell also conjured up the threat of the courts and the agency's duty to withstand judicial review. At the FCC hearing in Richmond, in late February, Powell again congratulated ordinary Americans on their participation and then added: “If the Commission does the same half-hearted effort it did in the last Biennial Review, I guarantee you that every one of the broadcast ownership rules will be swept away in a court of law” (Powell quoted in Federal Communications Commission, 2003b, p. 4). The other Republican commissioners were less vocal about public participation throughout the course of the proceeding. Commissioner Martin (2003, June 2) expressed his opinion of citizen involvement by omission during a public forum held in New York at Columbia Law School. The commissioner neglected to discuss citizen involvement, though did mention the obligations of the FCC to answer to the courts and to fill its Congressional mandate to review the ownership rules every 2 years. At the end of his introductory remarks, he made a perfunctory nod to citizen participants, saying he looked forward to the input of forum attendees. Meanwhile, Commissioner Abernathy was a slightly more vocal figure when speaking about public participation and the Third Biennial Review. At the FCC's only official hearing in Richmond, Virginia, she mentioned the volume of comments submitted to the rule-making record and that it showcased citizen participation. Following this recognition, she clarified “the statute and the courts require the Commission to act on a timely basis, and it is our obligation and duty to respect and adhere to that schedule” (Abernathy quoted in Federal Communications Commission, 2003, p. 7). In an interview, Abernathy explained that because commissioners are not elected officials, “there are limitations on the scope of the authority of the FCC to make certain changes in response to that public input.” Commenting on the importance of popular opposition, she said, “We really do have to be careful, I think, about following the law that's given to you… It [A rule] cannot be based on the number of complaints… The test has to go back to the law” (Abernathy, 2009). Bureaucratic staff follow suit Bureaucratic staff also played an important role in shaping the valence of public participation in the ownership debate. By law (specifically, the Administrative Procedure Act), staff must review all comments before it, while differentiating between substantive and non substantive contributors to the rule-making record. In interview, several staff members emphasized their procedural responsibilities dealing with public participation in the ownership debate, while dismissing what the comments said. For example, FCC Staffer A stated: “A lot of the comments were clearly the same wording. [But] if they wrote it, it would get read… I looked at each and every one of them [the comments] and summarized those ideas that came in.” The summarizing processes were less about making sense of the shape of citizen arguments than noting their occurrence. Describing the process of review, FCC Staffer B explained that condensing involves word-for-word citations from a particular item, not intuitions or divinations of a larger sentiment that can be gleaned from multiple items submitted to the rule-making record. We spend months and months and months… reading and digesting what's coming in. Lawyers primarily do that while the economists are primarily looking at the information that's coming in for the purposes of analysis…[Economists may] tell the lawyers… “[T]his stuff that's coming in… well, this part of it is nonsense. We have something better, and this is what you should look at instead.” And that's what's going on for months and months and months, until you get to the final document. In general, summaries of a rule-making record exist as a reference point to what one or another party said. In other words, the very notion of connecting one brief comment by a citizen outraged by the problem of media consolidation with that of others is irrelevant to the review process practiced by permanent staff. Because of the general nature of complaints or concerns expressed by ordinary individuals, the bulk of citizen input seldom filters its way up to higher ranking individuals who are more directly involved in creating a draft document that commissioners review and that becomes the basis of a final outcome. As FCC Staffer C said, the comments “aren't usually very deep or analytical or, you know, substantiated by evidence, documentary or otherwise… And, you know, so it was really a very short summary that you ended up with.” Finally, staffers explained that the system of rule-making participation was sufficient and that the FCC bears no responsibility for aiding citizens in making sophisticated comments. As explained by Staffer B, “Comments are going to be as good as the time and effort they put into it.” In short, bureaucratic staff put into place what majority commissioners stated publicly: Nontraditional stakeholders mattered to the ownership debate as evidence of participation having happened, as a numerical count, and little more. Translational activities: Attempts to educate, connect, and elevate publics While commissioners and bureaucratic staff left publics to their own devices, the minority commissioners, Commissioners Copps and Adelstein, went beyond conventional administrative practices. Between 2002 and 2003, the bulk of their efforts focused on creating spaces and appearing at public forums on media ownership. More than a dozen public forums took place around the country, a move which was considered an unprecedented development in the history of rule-making debate at the agency (Boliek, 2002). In terms of translation, they labored to help nontraditional stakeholders see themselves as a whole rather than as isolated participants. Although they also indicated their desire to link and elevate public opposition both inside and outside the agency, they did not manage to fully incorporate concerns raised during nearly a dozen unofficial public forums around the country into the rule-making record. Nevertheless, their presence—and the forums—provided occasion to generate press coverage and bring visibility to the issue. As Copps and Adelstein went from forum to forum, they strung together each event for interested individuals and communities and elevated public concern for and opposition to the deregulation of ownership restrictions. For example, in April 2003, during introductory remarks at the Midwest Public Forum on Media Ownership, Commissioner Copps stated: In Durham we had 300 or 400 people turn out. Two weeks before that, in Seattle, we had 600 people turn out to express their interest in these issues. Very interesting when you go to these, too. They say, don't talk to me about being a consumer, I'm a citizen, and that's why I'm here. And I think the American people, once they're apprised of this issue, and once they're reminded that they're the owners of the public airwaves, they get the picture real quick. (Copps quoted in “Midwest public forum on media ownership,” 2003, p. 12) Yet, although they indicated their intent to bring forum participants' claims into the FCC, the two commissioners' actions did not entail a conventional process of involvement in rule-making debate. Several transcripts or tapes of the public forums never made it into the rule-making record, but the two Democratic commissioners nonetheless managed to give visibility to public concerns in a broader setting than the rule-making system. The forums generated news interest in public opposition to ownership deregulation. In an interview, Copps explained: “The beauty of it [the public forums] was we'd build a little press attention for it that informed not only us but it informed the American people about what was going on, too.” Thus, in spite of initial resistance from major media to cover the issue, “eventually you couldn't ignore it in the end” (Copps, 2009). Civil society gets involved As mentioned above, civil society groups hosted public forums around the country during the Third Biennial Review. These groups consisted of a motley crew: inside-The-Beltway public interest advocates, newly formed media reform groups that ran on mostly volunteer staff and addressed both local and national media policy issues, and Hollywood unions and professional societies. In addition to being hosts and generating participation in public forums, groups educated interested individuals and communities about media ownership, the FCC, and rule-making. Media Tank, a young media reform organization formed in Philadelphia in 2001, developed a web resource geared towards teaching interested individuals and communities locally and nationally about the players and the problems of media concentration. It detailed the time frame of the proceeding and included background on the issue, including initial questions posed by Copps as well as links to agency web pages, which taught users how to file a comment and what the FCC's rule-making processes entailed. Media Tank also sought to engage with individuals and communities face to face. The group held a handful of workshops, which were designed to serve as very basic introductions to the FCC and to media policy, more generally. The first took place at The Lighthouse, a community development organization that provides adult education, youth services, workforce development, and teen parenting services. Workshop participants talked about the significance of media, the role it plays, and the significance of ownership and access. Civil society groups in cities where public forums were being held also focused on generating press. In San Francisco, Media Alliance, a veteran media activist group, worked to secure an opinion editorial by Commissioner Adelstein in a major daily newspaper. It also garnered coverage in more activist-oriented media, including newer outlets that existed in an online format only. In Chicago, civil society groups partnered with a local cable access station to generate coverage of a public forum as well as of media concentration, more generally. In Atlanta, a community radio station (WFRG-FM) and a progressive news magazine (Creative Loafing) were among the partners sharing knowledge about the problem of media concentration. The delayed effects of participation On June 2, 2003, 12 media ownership studies, 1 FCC hearing, 12 non-FCC public forums, and 520,000 comments later, the Commission voted three-to-two along party lines to increase the number of television stations a single company can own, both locally and nationally. It also revised provisions of the regulations governing common ownership of radio stations in local markets and replaced two existing rules limiting common ownership among newspapers and broadcast stations (the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule and the radio/television cross-ownership rule) with a single set of cross-media limits. Immediately following the vote, the FCC attracted enormous attention, and public opposition did not go unheard. On June 4, 2003, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation denounced the decision and demanded that the agency explain why it ignored public outcry against ownership deregulation (Media Ownership Rules, 2003). Six weeks later, the House Appropriations Committee approved the Commerce, Justice, State, the Judiciary and Related Agencies Appropriation Bill for 2004, which among other items restricted funds to the agency when granting broadcast licenses to stations whose national audience reach exceeded 35%. Eventually, Congress passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2004, which changed the national television ownership cap from the new threshold of 45% to 39%. The act also slowed the frequency with which the FCC would be required to review ownership rules from 2 to 4 years (Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2004). Though insulated from public pressure, the courts made decisions that amplified public concern for media concentration. Three months after the June 2nd vote, public interest advocates challenged the FCC's decision in court. Initially, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued a stay on the new ownership rules, preventing them from being enforced pending the outcome of the litigation. One year later, the Third Circuit reprimanded the FCC, with a partial remand of the agency's 2002 Biennial Review Order. In Prometheus v. FCC, the court stated that the FCC had not adequately justified the numerical limits for local ownership of radio, local ownership of television, and cross ownership of media in local markets. The court also stated that despite the shoddiness of its metric, the agency had properly determined the need to revise the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule (Prometheus Radio Project v. FCC, 2004; see also, Wellborn, 2004). Convention creeps in: The First Quadrennial Review of Media Ownership Rules Four years after the Third Biennial Review of Broadcast Ownership Rules, the agency took up the ownership rules again—albeit under very different circumstances. Not only was the agency's latitude constrained by Congressional and court actions, it was also confronted with a different sense of public awareness about the problem and potential solutions to media concentration. Majority leadership answered calls for expanded public engagement, while prioritizing the Commission's need to answer to legal and statutory demands as opposed to those of ordinary citizens. When Chairman Martin took the helm of the agency and commenced the First Quadrennial Review of Media Ownership Rules in June 2006, he announced a plan to offer additional opportunities for public participation in the ownership proceeding: Six hearings would accompany the First Quadrennial Review of Media Ownership Rules. Martin attended the majority of events with infrequent acknowledgement to the concerns expressed by citizens in hearings. More often than not, the chairman celebrated the opportunity for publics to speak while affirming the importance of modernizing the ownership rules and of abiding by judicial and Congressional decrees. These celebratory statements were typically followed by three arguments: The Third Circuit Court had affirmed the FCC's decision to revise the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule in Prometheus v. FCC; the rules under consideration were written long ago and badly matched to the current media landscape; and the FCC had an obligation to create the condition for competition in the media marketplace. Also sitting on the Commission was Deborah Taylor Tate. Throughout the debate, her involvement was compliant with Martin's agenda. She made no notable statements about the proceeding in the press or at various speaking engagements and frequently delivered prepared remarks, seldom raised follow-up questions, or made concluding statements. A typical address included a welcome, thanks, and quick remarks that she looked forward to gathering public input. Tate would close her comments with mention where previous hearings took place, then identify a host city by the size of the media market, and mention some item of historical importance to the place. The third Republican appointee, Commissioner Robert McDowell, also affirmed the need to establish opportunities for public input, but rarely outwardly connected to participating publics or acknowledged them in anything other than courteous ways. In an interview, McDowell explained the importance of broadening participation for contentious issues. McDowell (2009) also described the open mic period of hearings as “very valuable.” He said: “I took a lot of notes on almost every witness, not every witness—I can't guarantee that—almost every witness, even if they were saying essentially the same thing as witnesses who had spoken previously,” McDowell said. “I thought it was very, very important. I mean I… it was democracy in action” (McDowell 2009, interview with the author). At the hearings themselves, McDowell seldom commented on or interacted with participants. But in events outside the hearing process, McDowell was more candid about his doubts about the substance of public comments: The public hearings have been a better measurement of emotion than dispassionate data; but they have been very valuable. At a minimum, they have provided our fellow Americans with the chance to vent their frustration with the federal government. We have been yelled at about the Iraq war, global warming, the tyranny of America's copyright laws, and the need to legalize drugs, among other topics. And then there was the fellow in Los Angeles who had a very strong opinion about the Peloponnesian War. (McDowell, 2007, p. 7) For McDowell, the expanded opportunities that the agency had offered served as a safety valve rather than as a means of contributing substantively to the media ownership debate. Translational efforts redoubled Civil society actors and minority commissioners did not roll back their efforts to engage publics in 2006–2007. In fact, their dealings with publics became more polished and more targeted. For instance, Commissioners Copps and Adelstein continued to serve as connectors between sites of public discussion across the country. They attended 33 public discussions, nearly all outside of the Beltway,7over the course of the two proceedings. Similar to their roles in 2002–2003, Copps and Adelstein worked in 2006–2007 to connect public expressions in one public forum or FCC hearing to other conversations. But the commissioners introduced a new way of translating citizen input. They sought to explicitly link past citizen involvement and public concerns of the Third Biennial Review with that of the First Quadrennial Review. Copps and Adelstein threaded public discussion across the two iterations of the ownership debate. They viewed Congress's rollback of the threshold for national television ownership cap, and the Third Circuit Court's partial remand of the FCC's 2003 decision, as a direct result of public participation. In legal terms, the rallying point of the Prometheus decision was not accurate. The Third Circuit Court did not rule on the basis that the FCC did not listen to public opposition to loosening ownership restrictions, but rather on the principle of irreparable harm that might result from a rollback of rules as well as on the need to maintain regulatory status quo given the magnitude of the decision before the court. Different from 2002–2003, their interactions with publics became more directed. For example, in Harrisburg, at an official FCC hearing, Copps tried to limit the conversation. He asked: “Is your Harrisburg media, your Pennsylvania media more generally, telling you what you need to know about all of this?” Keeping people focused on the rule-making as opposed to general opposition (as in 2003) was critical for Copps and Adelstein. Thus, their translational work shifted slightly to narrower concerns than those seen during the Third Biennial Review. Because Martin agreed to provide additional opportunities for public participation (above and beyond the notice-and-comment system), the two commissioners devoted as much time providing textured summaries of public testimony as guiding participants to focus on questions directly before the FCC. Civil society groups grow more sophisticated By the time the FCC announced the First Quadrennial Review in June 2006, civil society groups had refined their supportive work and become more experienced in facilitating individuals' and communities' entry into media policy debates. Moreover, they were no longer only working from the outside to break open the rule-making system and Beltway discourse. With Martin's decision to hold FCC hearings, civil society groups were closer to the rule-making process than ever; they could be a part of the process, not simply oppose it. Not surprisingly, many groups organized forums, facilitated understanding and participation in official hearings, and drew participants' attention to the specifics of the policy debate. Free Press, a national media reform group, together with Consumers Union, a veteran institution in public interest advocacy, and Prometheus Radio Project, a national advocate for low-power radio, took a lead role in organizing educating interested communities, individuals, and the press. Typically, the three organizations set up camp in a hotel for several weeks, meeting with different communities and setting up pre hearing workshops to educate individuals about the FCC and the proceeding. Many workshops attracted people unfamiliar with the media ownership debate, causing workshop organizers to spend much of the time fielding informational questions. Workshop organizers also set aside time to guide individuals about the basics of writing and delivering testimony before the FCC. In time, civil society activities expanded. Other groups hosted public forums as well, occasionally with financial or institutional support from Free Press (Silver, 2009). Organizers followed Free Press's model, connecting with groups working in communities, getting citizens to think about the issue of ownership in relation to personal experience, and helping those who took to the open mic to speak to the commissioners in a way that connected with policy problems and potential solutions. To facilitate staff understanding of these forums, groups also attempted to condense public expressions in summaries submitted alongside transcripts and recordings. In addition, civil society groups promoted stories about ownership and public concern for media consolidation to the press. In an interview, Free Press Organizer Amanda Ballantyne (2009) explained, “it provides not only stories for the Commissioners when they are making their own arguments, but it also provides stories for reporters and media attention.” It was useful to “find these gems in these testimonies that you [would] never have had otherwise.” Equally as important, civil society groups increased their presence inside the FCC. For example, by 2007, Free Press was not only jockeying for attention through stories and arguments raised by articulate individuals but also “pursuing an inside strategy” (Silver, 2009). Often, Free Press legal arguments evidenced far greater complexity than what citizens expressed in the spaces that the organization afforded. To some extent, Free Press and others like it were fast becoming part of rule-making culture and rule-making logics, using public participation to help them legitimate their own positions as well. The 2007 vote and its aftermath On December 17, 2007, 18 months, six FCC hearings, 12 (non-FCC) public forums, and more than 166,000 comments later, the FCC voted 3–2, along party lines to relax ownership rules. Changes were less far-reaching by Powell's standards. The final decision ordered the relaxation of the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule in cases where the agency determined that a combination serves the public interest. Specifically, the agency reasoned “certain limited combinations of newspaper and broadcast facilities in the largest markets are in the public interest” (Federal Communications Commission, 2007, p.9). The rules on local television ownership (which had been relaxed under the 2002 Biennial Review Order), local radio ownership (which had not), and radio-television cross ownership (which were pegged to pre-2002 criteria) all remained intact. Reflections on inclusive rule-making debate This analysis has attempted to show the inner workings of translational activities in communication policy discourse. Spanning more than 6 years, the media ownership debate is a story of resistance to and accommodation by state and civil society actors. Some state actors resisted publics, even while appearing to welcome them into rule-making processes. Other state actors accommodated publics, working with civil society actors who also amplified the sentiments of concerned citizens and communities. Altogether, the words and deeds of majority commissioners and bureaucratic staff, on the one hand, and civil society groups and minority commissioners on the other, demonstrate the complex relationship between public participation and citizen influence in rule-making at the FCC. Namely, participation does not lead automatically or directly to influence: though administrative procedures afford public consultation, citizen input requires active, intentional discursive work of translation in order for participation to have impact. The push and pull between publics and majority commissioners during the media ownership debate marked a significant change in the conventional politics of policy-making at the FCC. In contrast to the usual set of legal and technical experts that feature in rule-making proceedings at the agency, the 2002–2007 debate featured a wider set of stakeholders. Through minority commissioners and civil society groups who educated publics about media ownership and amplified and elevated public concern for media concentration, ordinary individuals and communities challenged administrative culture. In particular, they did so in a face-to-face context of official hearings and public forums. Were it not for these encounters, the FCC could have easily (and validly in procedural terms) avoided engagement with public concern. Translational activities brought publics into contact with one another and to the agency and laid bare the ways in which majority commissioners and bureaucratic staff's usual routines were inadequate at dealing with public opposition. Although it would be inaccurate to equate translational work with “winning” or stopping deregulation in its tracks, the effects of this discursive work are nonetheless significant. Indeed, the power of public opposition was weaker relative to lobbyists from News Corp., Sinclair Broadcast, The Tribune Company, and other conglomerate-owned media companies whose push for fewer ownership rules prevailed. But public concern did shape outcomes in incremental ways. In 2003, the Congressional rewrite of the national television ownership rule shows that translation may not be neatly contained within the timetable or scope of an FCC proceeding. In 2007, majority leadership voted to mainly target newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rules—in other words, the majority tendered much more modest changes than during the tenure of Chairman Powell. Altogether then, translational activities shepherded public opposition, bringing scrutiny to the FCC and the politics of rule-making and influencing the scope of deregulatory efforts. In this sense, we can begin to understand translation's power both in terms of process and outcomes. Publics emerged in opposition to deregulatory instincts at the commission in 2002 and pushed the agency to reconsider its processes for engaging publics. At the same time, in 2007, public opposition to ownership deregulation resulted in modest changes (by comparison to rollback in 2002). Though not completely victorious, the expression of more specific concerns over the effects of deregulation corresponded to more tempered deregulation. Translation worked to thus broaden debate and change decision making. Translation's dual power as both process and outcome thus suggests an addendum to McChesney's (2004) argument that the media ownership debate represents a political opportunity or “critical juncture” (p. 24). Namely, giving publics presence and power requires renewal and reinvention. With the constraints of administrative practices that define the rule-making process, the chance for publics to be heard and understood and to understand communication policy demands the continual efforts of supporters inside the FCC and within civil society. This applies just as equally to civil society groups as to the FCC. As then legal scholar (now Supreme Court Justice) Breyer (1982) noted, intermediary organizations claiming to speak for citizens can also become conventional actors. Translation of publics in future controversial rule-making proceedings will depend on not only understanding but also challenging the agency's system of public participation. As for the FCC, the media ownership debate demonstrates a tendency to hide behind procedures and neglect the goal of public acceptance for its decisions. In other words, changes must not only focus on procedural reform which make rule-making fairer and more just, but also transforming the culture of politics in policy-making and recognizing that publics cannot be taken for granted. If communication policy-making is going to be held to democratic standards more rigorous than those lax ones implied in administrative law, it will require the constant vigilance of the FCC and civil society groups with the power to make publics matter in meaningful ways. Notes 1 " Students of sociology and science and technology studies have also used the term “translation” to refer to the construction of scientific knowledge through networks or across institutional ecologies (see Callon & Law, 1982; Callon, 1986; Latour, 1987, 1988; Star & Griesemer, 1989). Although these sociologies of translation interrogate processes of power (such as, power to mobilize scientific truths) and, thus, share commonalities with this inquiry, this article differs in important ways. By situating itself in a history of exclusionary participatory practices at the FCC, this work seeks to address why translation matters, not only how translation works. 2 " This includes four on record with FCC commissioners, eight with staff who spoke anonymously, and more than a dozen on record with civil society groups. 3 " The FCC has five commissioners in total. The political party in power—during this 2002–2007 period, Republic Party—gets three seats, whereas the “minority” party gets two. This article refers to the two Democratic commissioners of this time period as “minority commissioners,” and the three Republican commissions as “majority commissioners.” 4 " Media institutions are also a component of civil society (Gangadharan, 2013). Because of space constraints, in this article I focus solely on the work of civil society and the FCC. 5 " See also Gangadharan (2013). 6 " Search terms included: media ownership, media merger, radio merger, media consolidation, radio consolidation, media concentration, and FCC or Federal Communications Commission. 7 " The “Beltway” refers to the District of Columbia. References Abernathy , K. Q . ( 2003, June 2 ). Statement of Commissioner Kathleen Q. Abernathy, Re: 2002 Biennial Regulatory Review . Washington, DC : FCC . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC Abernathy , K. 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TI - Translation in the Media Ownership Debate: The Work of Civil Society Groups and the Federal Communications Commission, 2002–2007
JF - Communication Culture and Critique
DO - 10.1111/cccr.12030
DA - 2013-12-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/translation-in-the-media-ownership-debate-the-work-of-civil-society-Ah3vbVsbo5
SP - 550
VL - 6
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -