by Ross Myers
FCC on Civic Engagement in the National Broadband Plan
March 17, 2010 in Google Fiber by Ross Myers
“Civic engagement is the lifeblood of any democracy and the bedrock of its legitimacy. Broadband holds the potential to strengthen our democracy by dramatically increasing the public’s access to information and by providing new tools for Americans to engage with this information, their government and one another. Increasingly our national conversation, our sources for news and information, and our knowledge of each other will depend upon broadband. The transition to new information technologies and services can open new doors to enhance America’s media environment, but with traditional sources of news and information journalism under severe stress in the current media and economic environments, we confront serious challenges to ensure that broadband is put to work to strengthen our democracy.
Civic engagement starts with an informed public, and broadband can help by strengthening the reach and relevance of mediated and unmediated information.
Broadband can enable government to share unmediated information more easily with the American people. Providing more information and data to the public about the processes and results of government can strengthen the citizenry and its government.
Broadband can also empower citizens to engage their government through new broadband-enabled tools. Broadband has already increased access to information and revolutionized the way citizens interact with each other. Companies such as YouTube enable the distribution of “user-generated content” over the Internet; YouTube now supports monthly more than 120 million viewers watching more than 10 billion videos.1 More than 80% of U.S. adults who are online use social media at least once per month, and half of them participate in social networks such as Facebook.2 Today, out of the 36% of Americans involved in a civic or political group, more than half of them (56%) use digital tools to communicate with other group members.3 Government must take advantage of these trends and adopt broadband-enabled tools to encourage citizens to communicate with government officials more often and in richer ways–and to hold these officials more accountable.
Building the infrastructure for America’s democracy has been a challenge since the birth of this nation. The Founders worried about it long ago. In 1787, when talking about newspapers–the broadband of its time–Thomas Jefferson wrote:
“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers, and be capable of reading them.”4
More than two centuries ago, Jefferson was addressing deployment–getting newspapers out ubiquitously–and adoption–ensuring people read, recognizing the value of knowledge and making use of the information infrastructure. Although our technology may change, our democratic challenge remains the same.”
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