July 2015

[Commentary] I recently provided an update on the ongoing activities throughout the Federal Communications Commission to tackle the process reform recommendations from the Staff Working Group’s Report on FCC Process Reform from early 2014. To complement these activities, a task force has recently been formed that includes representatives from all five Commissioners’ offices at the FCC. As part of this review, the task force will seek public input from those who regularly interact with the FCC, including consumers, licensees, communications law practitioners, and anyone with an interest in improving the FCC’s decision-making processes. The task force will also review the practices of other similarly situated agencies to compare their operations with those at the FCC.

Topics that will be reviewed and considered will include, but are not limited to: (a) the use of delegated authority, and practices for providing notice of matters being handled on delegated authority; (b) procedures for pre-vote circulation of Commission-level matters; (c) procedures associated with editing Commission decisions; (d) practices to encourage efficient Commission decision-making, such as the Consent Agenda; (e) approaches for providing increased transparency of FCC procedures and protocols, and (f) practices to track, disclose and encourage prompt Commissioner votes on items on circulation. We appreciate your interest and assistance in helping the FCC to continue to evolve the means by which it delivers upon its mission.

The Chinese Communist Party has always seen propaganda, known as “thought work,” as key to controlling society. Coordinated by a standing member of the Politburo, propaganda reaches down through every layer of the Chinese state and society, with the military, education, and the arts all mobilized as vehicles for the dissemination of centrally determined messages. But today, China’s propagandists are facing new challenges. One is ideological. In an age when the Communist Party is curating a form of capitalism, what does the party stand for? How should it secure loyalty? What sort of central message should it project? The second is technological. The Internet is designed to challenge centralized control and accelerate horizontal communication, whereas the Chinese state remains a rigidly vertical power structure.

The regime’s propagandists are stuck in a paradox. On the one hand, they need to promote nationalism as the one message that can emotionally bind the nation, and especially the youth. But because of the nature of the Internet, this nationalism ends up running ahead of the state’s own propaganda, with the result that the regime loses control and has to play catch-up with the outpouring of nationalist emotions among the younger generation expressing their views on Chinese social media.

[Rawnsley is Professor of Public Diplomacy at Aberystwyth University, where his research centers on the intersection of international relations and international communications, with a focus on East Asia.]

Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) is holding up a bipartisan bill whose defenders say must pass in order for America to gain more credibility on Internet issues. The reason? Politics. Sen Cruz has argued that the bill, known as the DOTCOM Act, would allow the Internet to be "handed over" to countries like China and Russia that don't share US values when it comes to freedom of speech and expression. But the bill's backers say it does no such thing -- and they're probably right.

The DOTCOM Act would allow the US government to transfer its power to oversee the Internet's naming and addressing system -- what turns www.google.com into a viewable Web page -- over to the international community. While this might sound like giving the Internet to America's rivals, Washington actually ceded those powers long ago, and it retains them in name only. Today, that managing function is performed by a nonprofit called the International Corporation for Names and Numbers, or ICANN. ICANN itself is governed by a whole slew of international actors, not just governments. And its executives have been adamant that states will never have sole decision-making power in the body. Right now, governments serve an advisory function only, so even if China and Russia wanted to take control of the Internet, as Sen Cruz claims, they'd have to get through everyone else who opposed it first. For Sen Cruz, opposing the DOTCOM Act scores him political points with the Republican base, which largely favors a hawkish foreign policy. But Sen Cruz is practically alone in his criticism of the transition of Internet authority; even former critics of the idea, such as Rep Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), voted for the bill because it places a congressional check on the process.

In a personal jab at Presidential contender Sen Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Donald Trump gave out Sen Graham's cellphone number in public while speaking onstage at a campaign event in South Carolina. It's the latest in an ongoing spat between the two men after Sen Graham called Trump a "jacka--" on television. Unsurprisingly, the deliberate disclosure prompted reporters and ordinary citizens to bombard Sen Graham's number with phone calls and texts. No doubt Sen Graham's staff is scrambling to undo the damage by changing the Senator's phone number.