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  2. July 2016

July 2016

Google, Trying to Endear Itself to Europe, Spreads Cash Around

A yearlong digital training course for Irish high school teachers started in 2014. A fund to help European news outlets adapt to the web popped up in 2015. And in March, a virtual reality exhibition began at a Belgian museum to showcase a Renaissance painter. All these projects are aimed at supporting European culture and education, helping the region embrace the fast-changing online world. And all are financed by Google.

Google has been staging a full-court press in Europe to finance everything from start-up offices to YouTube-sponsored music concerts, trying to remake its image in the region as it battles a mounting list of regulatory woes. Those efforts represent a campaign of “soft lobbying” where instead of, or alongside, paying registered lobbyists to advocate its case in the corridors of power, a company looks to change the minds of the public at large. In Google’s case, experts say, its push equates to an almost unprecedented effort by a United States tech company to change the perceptions of Europeans, many of whom still see it as an American interloper that does not play by the rules. Google’s soft lobbying efforts are by no means unique, and have filled a funding gap that governments and European rivals are unwilling, or incapable, of matching. But the company has ramped up its campaign in recent years, earmarking about $450 million from 2015 to 2017 — based on Google’s public filings and industry estimates of its activities — to revamp its reputation with Europeans and, more important, the region’s policy makers who have the power to issue fines totaling billions of dollars.

‘This is preposterous,’ says the media about the media’s convention overkill

[Commentary] The balloons have already been stuffed into the rafters. The nominee is already known. The story lines are few. Yet 15,000 journalists — six for every one of the 2,500 delegates here — have encamped for the Republican National Convention.

Despite the news media’s exhaustively chronicled (by the news media) financial problems, there seems to be no slowdown in the intensity and investment by media companies in covering Donald Trump’s now-inevitable coronation as the party’s standard-bearer. The central media corridor, a kind of wonk Woodstock (with better food), is an arcade along East Fourth Street, adjacent to Quicken Loans Arena. The question is: Why are so many gathered for what is largely a scripted and preordained event? Barring unforeseen developments — and political conventions are engineered to avert unforeseen developments — the political conventions may be the least efficient news events that the media covers.

Carson, Fiorina failed to leverage social media as their campaigns peaked

[Commentary] A project supported by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and Syracuse University’s Center for Computational and Data Sciences tracks the Twitter and Facebook feeds of active presidential campaigns. The project, Illuminating 2016, looks at the number of messages each candidate sends, and also codes by message type. By doing so, this tool is able to provide details about candidate social-media usage that typically do not register on the mainstream media’s radar.

There are a few strong similarities between the trajectories of the Fiorina and Carson campaigns. Both proudly touted their status as outsiders to politics—Ben Carson as a well-known neurosurgeon and Carly Fiorina as first female CEO of a top-20 US corporation, Hewlett Packard. Both candidates, as shown by the Illuminating 2016 site, likely under-utilized social media when they probably should have used it most. There is no evidence that either candidate’s social media utilization patterns influenced his or her performance in the polls. Comparing their social media behaviors to their performance on the campaign trail, however, does reveal a disparity between social media strategies and what each candidate faced offline.

[Jerry Robinson is a Ph.D. candidate at Syracuse University and a summer research assistant on the Illuminating 2016 project.]

NCTA, Others Seek More Time for Business Data Services Comment

Cable and telecommunication Internet service providers have joined to ask the Federal Communications Commission for more time to respond to the commission's proposal to remake the regulatory framework for business data (formerly "special access") services. The National Cable & Telecommunications Association, USTelecom, and ITTA – The Voice of Mid-Size Communications Companies joined in the motion to extend the July 26 reply comment deadline by three weeks.

They said that "brief" extension of time was warranted given a variety of factors including 1) the "voluminous" initial comments, the fact that it is a "complicated and extremely consequential" rulemaking; 2) that the FCC is high on a Verizon/INCOMPAS compromise proposal that could include their members; 3) the FCC's release, on the same day the initial comments were due, the peer reviews of the report on the business data services market that the FCC used in coming up with its proposed remake. NCTA et al. said the report was "fundamental to the Commission’s proposed regulations, and a thorough review of these peer reviews and staff response is essential." They also cite delays in getting access to 2013 data that is the basis for much of the FCC's analysis.

Comcast Gets Rolling With ‘Xfinity WiFi on Wheels’

Comcast said it has begun to deploy a portable broadband platform, called Xfinity Wi-Fi on Wheels, that was developed in partnership with Ericsson. The platform, tailored to bring Wi-Fi connectivity to venues such as concerts and festivals as well as emergency response situations, is a customized Ford T-350 van equipped with six Ericsson Wi-Fi access points perched on a 40-foot tall mast.

“The Wi-Fi has a 500-foot range and can support up to 3,000 users, potentially reaching speeds five times faster than cellular,” noted Eric Schaefer, Comcast’s SVP of wireless product management. He said Comcast conducted a practice run at the Wizard World Comic Con in Philadelphia, noting that the platform provided users with access to WiFi speeds of more than 50 Mbps. Comcast has since taken its act on the road, stopping by the New Haven Arts and Ideas Festival in June, but have it back in Philadelphia in time for next week’s Democratic National Convention.

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