Blogs

With our history so closely tied to advertising and broadcasting and our mission focused on enhancing democracy, the Benton Foundation has always had an eye on the impact of media on elections. So we take a moment this week to reflect on advertising and the 2012 elections.

Although we may take for granted these days that “everyone uses the Internet,” recent headlines demonstrate that Internet and broadband adoption are not yet universal and much work still needs to be done if the U.S. is going to realize the full benefit of these powerful tools. Without broadband, people and businesses are cut off from the $8 trillion global Internet economy, limiting opportunities for jobs and economic prosperity.

REMARKS OF FCC COMMISSIONER MICHAEL J. COPPS (Ret.)
MMTC ACCESS TO CAPITAL LUNCHEON
WASHINGTON, DC
JULY 19, 2012

Things don’t turn out so well when the boundaries of a debate are determined by just one side. It’s all but impossible to carry on a vibrant national dialogue when the parameters of our conversations are demarcated by powerful interests that profit from limiting the discussion and that know how to use the tools of communications to keep contrasting viewpoints off-limits. The civic dialogue that results is neither civic nor is it a dialogue. It is a ballgame that is fixed before the first pitch is thrown.

:

Achieving a Strategic Bandwidth Advantage

And a Psychology of Bandwidth Abundance

To

Drive High-Performance Knowledge Exchange

Fujitsu Conference on

Paving the Road to Unlimited Bandwidth:

Technologies and Applications for a Connected Age