As I’ve been hinting over the past weeks, I am now working on media reform issues on a full-time basis.
The Social Science Research Council,
a distinguished non-profit that supports social science research in the public
interest, has hired me as the program coordinator of their "Necessary Knowledge for a Democratic Public Sphere"
program.
a mouthful. But basically my job will be to help bring together media reform
advocates with media researchers so they can collaborate more effectively
together. As I understand it, there is huge need for better coordination and
communication among activists and academics in the field of media reform. Our
main mechanism for facilitating this will be the launch in a couple of months of
an online “Media Research Hub” that will support a broad community of media
reform actors with various tools for collaboration and information sharing.
It’s a rather dramatic departure
from my United Nations portfolio of the past 10 years or so. But I will remain
engaged with international public policy issues, which is wonderful. And I will
get to work on cutting-edge stuff like the effect of the blogosphere on
traditional media, broadband access to underserved areas, community wifi,
independent press, and lots of other cool new media
areas. With the possible renewal of the 1996 Telecommunications Act sometime this year, and the alarming developments in media consolidation, it’s an exciting time to be engaged in this area.